The YouTube video sharing platform is accessible on computers and mobile devices. Most people activate a YouTube app on their smartphone and watch videos directly from it. The problem is, they need a strong Wi-Fi connection to watch the videos, otherwise they are not visible. But it can be worked around if you download the videos before you lose your Wi-Fi connection.
For example, suppose you want to watch a lot of YouTube videos, but don’t have time to watch them. A simple solution would be to download the videos to your mobile device and watch them later when you have more time. Since you may not have a Wi-Fi connection, you will still be able to view the downloaded videos on your smartphone without the connection.
The internet has a lot of tutorials on how to download YouTube videos to your laptop or iPhone. But what if you have an Android device? There are at least 7 tips you should learn to download YouTube videos to your Android device. Most of these tips require you to download software. Use your best judgment to determine which one is right for you.
1) Sign up for YouTube Premium
YouTube Premium is a paid membership that gives you special privileges not available to free members. Some of these benefits include ad-free videos and the ability to download and watch videos offline. Ads can technically be avoided with the free adblocker tool on Google Chrome. But to download videos and watch them offline, you need a Premium subscription.
First of all, you need to download the YouTube mobile app for Android. Now sign in to your YouTube account and upgrade to a Premium membership if you haven’t already. Once you have a Premium subscription, you can start browsing to the YouTube videos you want to download.
The download process is straightforward. Start watching a YouTube video on your mobile app. There will be a download icon under the video player. The icon looks like a gray circle with a white arrow pointing to a horizontal line. Tap the download icon and you will be asked to choose the desired video quality. Choose the video quality, such as 320p, 720p, or 1080p.
The download will begin. You can continue to watch the video for now while you wait for the download to complete. Once you see the download icon turn blue with a white check mark, you will know the download is complete. When you’re ready to watch the videos offline, go to the Library tab of the mobile app. You will see a list of all downloaded videos. Tap the video you want to watch.
2) Download YouTube Go
YouTube Go is an Android application developed by Google. It is designed for lower quality Android smartphones without a lot of awesome specs. You can use YouTube Go to download your favorite YouTube videos quickly and easily. It’s perfectly legal software and doesn’t require you to pay any money. It’s totally free.
What’s even better is that you don’t have to sign up for YouTube Premium. You can download videos without being a Premium subscriber. There is no restriction on what you can download and how much you can download. Downloading to your Android smartphone won’t take long.
3) Buy an Android phone with 32GB + storage space
Usually, YouTube video download sizes are quite large. They can range from 200MB to over 2GB per video, depending on the quality of the videos. For example, if you encounter a 4K video that is 10 minutes long, the download size might be 4 or 5 GB. If you have 16 GB of internal storage on your phone, this download might consume 25% of your storage. .
If you want to play safe, buy an Android smartphone with 32 GB of internal space or more. Then it can hold more video content without requiring any external memory source. Of course, you can always choose to store your YouTube videos on a microSD card or an external hard drive. Your smartphone would need a lot for a microSD card.
4) Download from URL
Do you want to bypass downloading a mobile app or buying a new smartphone? If so, you can download YouTube video from the url. There are online platforms like ClipConverter.cc which allow you to download videos from YouTube URL for free. This is a website, so you will need to visit it in your mobile web browser.
You should be able to access this free online media recorder on your Android smartphone. The page has a small video URL box and a selection of conversion formats. Enter the URL of the YouTube video in the Video URL box on page. Choose a conversion format for the final videos you are going to download. You can choose MP3, M4A, AAC, MP4, AVI, 3GP, MOV and MKV.
Now click or tap on the “Continue” button. Check the format you selected, then click the “Start” button. You will see the conversion process begin. The conversion can take from a few minutes to several minutes. Once completed, you will be presented with a temporarily downloadable link. Make sure to download the video from the link and store it in your smartphone’s private folder.
5) Choose a low quality resolution
One trick around massive YouTube video downloads is to choose a low quality resolution if the download option is available. For example, if you are using the YouTube Premium option, you can select the HD quality of the video. Obviously, large videos like 1080p and 4K will produce massive files to download and save. You can avoid this by choosing the lower resolution option.
6) No likes or comments
Please note that you cannot leave likes or comments on YouTube videos that you watch offline. You also won’t be able to see how many followers the content creator has on their channel. If you want to know how to see subscribers on YouTube, the answer is simple. Find a Wi-Fi hotspot and reconnect to the Internet. Then you can see the total number of subscribers for a particular channel.
7) Don’t download everything
Downloading YouTube videos can be addicting. You might come across a lot of videos that you would like to keep and take with you everywhere. But you have limited space on your smartphone, so you can’t take everything with you. The best advice is to download the videos you like the most. Then you can save more space on your smartphone.
