[Guide] How to Free Download YouTube Movie Videos 720p/1080p on El Capitan
The steps to free download videos movies from YouTube on Mac OS X 10.11.4/10.14 are quite similar. Here we take the YouTube downloader for mac El Capitan MacX YouTube Downloader as an example to show you how to download YouTube on Mac OS X 10.11.4 based MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac etc.
Youtube Downloader Mac Os X
1Free download the Mac El Capitan YouTube downloader. Copy and paste the URL of the video or movie you want to download from YouTube to the address bar and click 'analyze' to load the video details. Alternatively, click 'paste & analyze' button to automatically detect the video opened in browse.
2Choose format, resolution, and file size for the video to be downloaded.
- Download and install Any Video Converter on Mac. Launch the application once the installation finished. Click on the “Download Video” tab at the top of Any Video Converter.
- Download YouTube on the Mac. In fact, there is a way of recording a YouTube video, with sound, just using software that is part of macOS and Mac OS X.
3Click 'Browse' button to specify an output folder on your computer to save the output files.
Safe Youtube Downloader Mac
4Hit 'Download Now' to start the 4K 1080P/720P YouTube videos free download on Mac OS X 10.11.4.
Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate for Mac. Convert common and HD/3D videos in 160+ formats on Mac. Merge, clip and split videos, add video effects, watermark, subtitle, soundtrack, etc.
Notice: All these YouTube downloader for Mac don't advocate any reproduce, distribute, transmit, broadcast or sell any content for any other purposes without prior written permission of YouTube or the respective licensors of the content. Please refer to YouTube terms of service before doing so.
Author: Bertha Miller | Updated on August 13, 2020
youtube-dl is an Open Source command line tool that lets you download video from YouTube (and many other videos sites). It’s often considered better than those paid video downloaders. In our previous article, we saw how to use youtube-dl to download videos on Android terminal. Even Windows has a YouTube GUI client, there are no such resources available for macOS. So, in this article, we’ll give you a walkthrough on how to install youtube dl on mac. Let’s begin.
Read: 5 best ways to Password Protect folders on mac
youtube-dl Installation
1. To install, youtube-dl, you need to install Wget first. And in order to install Wget, you need to install homebrew first. So, copy paste the following command on your Mac’s terminal (press cmd + space and type in terminal). Once you run the following command, you Mac will download Homebrew master file from Github. You may have to enter your Mac’s password several times. The whole process will take 10-15 minutes depending on your Internet speed.
2. Once you have downloaded Homebrew, you are ready to install Wget. Type in the following command and also enable OpenSSL for TLS support.
3. Now that we have Wget to download packages from the internet, we will use it to download and install Youtube-dl package. Type in the following command and press enter.
4. You have now successfully installed youtube-dl on your Mac, however, it won’t work yet. To check you can type youtube-dl on your terminal and it’ll throw a permission error. To fix this, you need to give the right permissions, type in the following command and press enter.
5. And that’s it, now you should be able to download YouTube videos (or any videos from youtube-dl supported sites) by simply typing youtube-dl [video-link]. For example, to download one of my videos from YouTube, I’ll type in the following command.
youtube-dl https://youtu.be/LxTcvc4cgCY
6. You can find the downloaded video in your home folder on your mac. To bring up the home folder simply go to Finder > Go > Home or press the keyboard shortcut CMD + Shift + H.
Must Read: 10 Free macOS apps to boost your Productivity
Download 1080p video using FFmpeg
By default, FFmpeg will download the second highest resolution. You may have to install FFmpeg to get the highest quality video. Without FFmpeg, you will likely get the second highest which in our case was 720p. To install FFmpeg, type in the following command.
brew install youtube-dl ffmpeg
Also Read: 5 ways to transfer files from mac to mac
Wrapping Up
So, this is how you use youtube-dl to download videos using your terminal. The app works exactly as advertised, yet not many people know about it. Anyway, if you wish to change your download location or download different resolution of the video, you can check out youtube-dl command line parameters on Github.