The Technophile

Perhaps you need to save a personal project that was uploaded somewhere but you no longer have access to that account. Perhaps you'll need to incorporate a video into a presentation. In either case, a YouTube downloader will come in handy. They're also a lot easier to use than using a screen recording program to shoot a video.

Instead, all you need is the URL of the video you wish to download locally, and these downloaders will take care of the rest.

Our current favorite is the 4K Video Downloader, which allows you to download videos while eliminating watermarks and saving them in an ad-free manner. You may also extract audio from a video or download a complete playlist with it. It has a plethora of paid-for options that ostensibly do the same functions.

There are, however, a few alternative apps to look into. So, no matter what your needs are, you'll definitely find something useful here. Continue reading to see our 5 Best YouTube Downloader Online - Web Apps.  

1. 4K Video Downloader

Specs: OS - Windows, Linux, macOS

Why you should buy: 

• Varied choice of formats
• You can download playlists
• Support for 360-degree videos and 3D
• No bloatware
  
  

Why you should avoid:
There are predefined limits on the quantity of playlists you can download. 

For rapid, hassle-free downloads of YouTube videos, 4K Video Downloader is the best YouTube downloader available which is totally free. It's easy to use, extremely configurable, ad-free, and comes with no additional software.

Just copy the URL of your favorite video (or your favorite playlist of less than 24 videos) from your online browser, click 'Paste URL,' and choose quality, output format and desired location.

There's a wide range of audio and video formats available, including MP4 and MP3. You can download captions for individual videos separately. Also note that 360-degree and 3D videos are also supported.

When you go into the properties, you can alter multi-stream downloads (raising the number of streams speeds up downloads but exponentially increases the chance of YouTube restricting your IP address) and set up a proxy connection.

Purchasing a key allows you to download lengthier playlists and playlists with subtitles, and it's a bargain at £7.95 (around US$10, AU$15) for a lifetime license available for three PCs, but the free edition contains everything else you could want.

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2. Allavsoft 

Specs: OS - macOS, Windows

Why you should buy: 

• It is not just a video downloader but a music downloader as well
• Ability to download your favorite videos and music from 1000+ websites
• Support for all the major names in the music industry like YouTube, Spotify, Deezer, Soundcloud, Qobuz and many more
• Easy to use 
• Excellent Customer Email support available 24/7
• Free trial available
• Provision of Money-Back guarantee if you are unhappy or unsatisfied with the product

  

Why you should avoid:

Frankly, we cannot think of any reason on why you should avoid trying out or buying Allavsoft

What we like about Allavsoft is that is not just a Youtube downloader which most of the websites are, but it is also a music downloader which means you can download your favorite music from Spotify, Soundcloud, Qobuz, Deezer and the likes. It is like the proverbial hitting two birds with one stone. Get videos as well as music at one go.

The ability to batch download videos, subtitles and music from 1000+ websites left us truly impressed. You can download from Vimeo, YouTube, Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter, NBCnews, Dailymotion, BBC, CNN, ESPN, Crunchroll, PBS, Acorn TV and the list goes on and on. 

You can choose to download in various file formats of your choosing like MP4, MP3, WAV, AVI, MOV etc. In case you have a lot of videos or music to download, Allavsoft has the fine ability to download multiple video files in a batch and also convert them simultaneously.  

Another thing of note is this versatile software automatically detects if your video to be downloaded contains any ads and stops the download. You will also see a built-in video player so that you can review and play the video which you want to download. Apart from this, there is also a very helpful Record button. 

Easy steps to use Allavsoft:

To download original videos and audio files from the internet to your computer, follow these two steps:

Step 1: Go to Allavsoft and copy and paste the movie or audio link.

Step 2: Select the Download option.

To convert web videos and music files to any video or audio format, follow these three steps.

Step 1: Go to Allavsoft and copy and paste the movie or audio link.

Step 2: Select the required video format from the General Video category, such as MP4, AVI, WMV, MPG, MKV, MOV, VOB, RMVB, FLV, and so on, or from the General Audio category, such as MP3, WAV, M4A, FLAC, AAC, AIFF, WMA, OGG, and so on.

Step 3: Select the Download option.

3. Any Video Converter Free

Specs: OS - Windows, macOS

Why you should buy: 

• Fantastic format support
• Video editor (built-in)
  
  

Why you should avoid:

• You cannot download in batches
• Lot of bundled software

Any Video Converter Free appears to be one of the best free YouTube downloaders available. The one problem is that this free edition only allows you to download one film at a time, but if you're looking for a quick fix, this may be something you're willing to overlook.

There are a plethora of video formats to choose from, and this YouTube downloader even includes a simple video editor. This can be used to crop a downloaded video, apply rudimentary effects like color correction, and add overlay text.

The entire procedure is simple and quick. The interface of Any Video Converter may not be to everyone's liking, but that's nitpicking; this is a wonderful free YouTube downloader in every other way. During installation, keep an eye out for the bundled Yahoo and ByteFence software, and you'll be fine.

4. Free YouTube Download

Specs: OS - Windows, macOS

Why you should buy:

• Option for auto downloads
• Option for batch downloads
• Option to shut down your PC when done

Why you should avoid:

Time limit of three minutes

It's not difficult to figure out what Free YouTube Download accomplishes. This is a very basic, laser-focused free YouTube downloader that eliminates distractions so you can get the job done right. If you paste a YouTube URL into the box, you can download the video in just a few clicks or for that matter, no clicks at all if you choose the Auto Download option.

If necessary, you can download multiple videos at once and convert them to a variety of formats on the fly. The formats available to you will vary depending on the quality of the original video, but in most situations, MP4, AVI,  MKV amd iPhone/iPod should be available. If you do not need the video, you can convert to an MP3 that simply contains the audio.

There's only one true drawback, and it's a major one: you can only download clips that are shorter than three minutes long with Free YouTube Download. For starters, this rules out most music videos, which is a genuine bummer.

5. aTube Catcher

Specs: OS - Windows

Why you should buy:

• Ability for batch downloading
• Conversion option to popular formats
• File conversion is automatic

Why you should avoid:

Installer has adware

If you notice, the name could imply that aTube Catcher is only a YouTube downloader, it can actually store videos from most of the popular video hosting portals.

But first, a word of caution: there is a lot of pesky adware present all during the installation. When you see the first app is displayed, select Cancel, and when you see the second is displayed, select Decline - you'll be free to enjoy aTube Catcher without any unwanted bloatware.

Downloaded videos can be converted to a variety of popular formats automatically, thereby giving you the option to customize them or the device you plan to watch them on. If you want to download a large set of videos at once, you can do so without exhausting all of your bandwidth which is something not all of the best free YouTube downloaders on this list offer.

This free YouTube downloader also comes with a myriad of extra features, including on-screen video recording, disc burning and video merging.

Can YouTube videos be legally downloaded?

Before you use a free YouTube downloader, keep in mind that downloading videos from third-party programs is against YouTube's TOS (terms of service), which state that you can only stream videos directly from the company's servers.

Unless the video is in the public domain or you own the video, have permission from the copyright holder, downloading videos is potentially a copyright infringement.

What's the difference between desktop apps and online YouTube downloaders?

There are a number of websites from which you can download YouTube videos, but we highly recommend not using them owing to their shortcomings when compared to desktop software. For starters, they're slower owing to your network connection's limits and also to the remote server's limits. Many of these websites are known to have NSFW ads or thumbnails of your recently downloaded videos, which aren't always acceptable.

Many of the online video converters generally don't provide you much control over the video file's professional format or quality. Most of the times, they allow you to download one video at a time, so don't expect to save entire playlists. You can't even think of 3D and 360-degree videos as only a few cameras can handle 4K.

We do hope that you enjoyed reading our post on 5 Best YouTube Downloader Online - Web Apps. Is there any other Web App that you currently use and is your favorite? Do drop in a comment. Stay safe! 

Sponsored post with payment: “Compensation for a portion of the post was provided by Allavsoft. Opinions expressed here are my own.”