Update: 15 February 2009. This tool no longer works. For downloading YouTube videos on Mac I use and recommend GlimmerBlocker now. GlimmerBlocker is great. It puts a download link on every YouTube page as well as an extra HQ button.
Another free option for Mac users and even PC users is to use Safari. You can see the .flv file downloading in the background in Activity Viewer (Window –> Activity).
Safari Activity Window
For PC’s use Free Youtube Download. It’s easy to use and you can choose to save the video as .avi which can be opened both in standard Windows Media Player and VLC media player.
This is one great tool! Download your YouTube videos hasslefree and for free. Great job Techcrunch. Nice tool. Not overcommercialised (looking at you SEOchat.com).
To download a video to your computer, enter the YouTube URL for the video in the box above (example). It will be downloaded in flv format – use VLC or another compatible player to view it.
No stupid application to install (doesn’t work in Safari Mac though, does in Firefox Mac). Simple instructions.
Now that’s the way to do linkbait!
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia. Alec maintains a photography and culture weblog at uncoy.com. His dance film Lapinthrope won prizes around the […]
That doesn’t work anymore! Lucky I have found a better one that gives me the videos in both MP4 and 3GP (mobile phone compatible) format. The techcrunch tool only lets you download in flv format which hardly any one wants.
In case anyone needs it: http://www.videodownloadr.com
I have found a nice tool to donwload my video live-downloader.com/
I found a very cool YouTube downloader tool:
clickyoutubedownload.com/
1-Click YouTube Video Download
You can download the firefox addon from here:
addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13990
Seems recently most youtube downloaders have stopped working after youtube has disbaled get_video
If you use firefox, I just recommend DownloadHelper plugin. It can download most videos from almost all servers.