YouTube video to iPhone?

[OriginalFDM]

What’s the least faffy way of getting a YouTube video downloaded and put onto your iPhone for offline viewing?

Thanks

[Squadrone Rosso]

Premium subscription. £10 / month.

[OriginalFDM]

Ok what’s the least faffy free way....

[Zad]

Install Video Download Helper on a PC based browser and grab it that way. Presumably drag and drop into the phone while docked to upload it there. Not actually done it, but that's where I would start.

[Davie_GLA]

Interestingly, what's the use case here? Asume it's a full feature thing and you won't have network access?

[The_Nugget]

There are many ways to download the video to your PC from YouTube. Google it...you want one that can download them as mp4 or MOV file type - not AVI. Some content providers seem to be able to prevent this.

Then add it to iTunes on the PC and sync your phone.
IIRC you can’t drag and drop onto the iPhone.

Or put it into some cloud storage - e.g Google Drive, OneDrive and make the file offline available, which will download a copy to your device.

You might also be able to play the video on your phone and use the screen recording feature and basically copy it, but some websites/apps seem to be able to prevent this.

It’s deliberately a bit faffy because....piracy - but it is possible. Obviously you will make sure you are legally able to use the content in this way, won’t you.

[OriginalFDM]

Thanks all for the help.

As for what it’s for, I watch a lot of instructional videos on YouTube mainly around art and digital music creation...I have 2 12 hour plane journeys next month and want to have some of my favourite videos watchable on the plane....nothing too sinister!

[Davie_GLA]

OriginalFDM said:

Thanks all for the help.

As for what it’s for, I watch a lot of instructional videos on YouTube mainly around art and digital music creation...I have 2 12 hour plane journeys next month and want to have some of my favourite videos watchable on the plane....nothing too sinister!

Thats fair enough. I wasn't suggesting it was for doginess

I have had limted success in the past from contacting the youtube channel owner directly and providing you can convince them you aren't ripping it off then he / she may send you the original.

[malks222]

would ‘screen record’ work for you?

have a google/ go into your settings and turn it on. basically you swipe down onto the volume/ brightness/ music control screen- press one button and it starts recording everything on your screen.

go to you tube, play video, then stop the recording. edit the video/ trim the gaff at the start/ finish and you should then have the video in your photos/ library?

[sjg]

If you're capable of running command-line software, youtube-dl is great. https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html (it's not hard - download the Windows exe, and you just run it with the URL to the video you want to download, no need for anything else unless you're fussy about size/quality).

Import into iTunes and sync to your phone, else put in cloud storage like Dropbox / OneDrive / etc which then lets you pick files to keep offline which can include videos.

I just pay for youtube premium though, the offline download stuff is trivially easy to use.

Edited by sjg on Monday 16th December 11:21

[feef]

malks222 said:

would ‘screen record’ work for you?

have a google/ go into your settings and turn it on. basically you swipe down onto the volume/ brightness/ music control screen- press one button and it starts recording everything on your screen.

go to you tube, play video, then stop the recording. edit the video/ trim the gaff at the start/ finish and you should then have the video in your photos/ library?

Screen record doesn't include sound. You can enable the microphone while it's doing it which will capture the sound, but will also capture any other noises being made in the vicinity

[Robb F]

feef said:

Screen record doesn't include sound. You can enable the microphone while it's doing it which will capture the sound, but will also capture any other noises being made in the vicinity

That's not true

[feef]

iPhone 8

Here’s the video

https://youtu.be/iQPIBFz1ZJo

Here’s the screen record.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0tMgAy-F-VFnHsaesm...

No sound.

[Robb F]

feef said:

iPhone 8

Here’s the video

https://youtu.be/iQPIBFz1ZJo

Here’s the screen record.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0tMgAy-F-VFnHsaesm...

No sound.

I just tried it on my xs max and it recorded sound

[feef]

Robb F said:

I just tried it on my xs max and it recorded sound

have you got the microphone enabled? AIUI that was the only way to record the sound and that means it'll also pick up background noise.

I wasn't aware of there being a difference between phone models

When you swipe up to expose the record button, press and hold the record button and check if the microphone is enabled.

happy to be proven wrong tho

[Robb F]

feef said:

Robb F said:

I just tried it on my xs max and it recorded sound

When you swipe up to expose the record button, press and hold the record button and check if the microphone is enabled.

Says microphone off and it does sound, may have been an update for later models

[feef]

Robb F said:

feef said:

Robb F said:

I just tried it on my xs max and it recorded sound

When you swipe up to expose the record button, press and hold the record button and check if the microphone is enabled.

Says microphone off and it does sound, may have been an update for later models

interesting. Good to know.

[Corso Marche]

If it doesn't contain too much copyrighted music then open any number of the online websites for downloading YT videos in an incognito/private browsing window on your phone. Paste the URL to the YT video and hit whatever Start/Next button there is, and download the clip to your phone from the browser.
Saves faffing around having to transfer it from your PC to your iPhone, or using iTunes etc
Quick and simple.
Alternative is to check and see if you can get a free trial of YouTube Premium.

[OriginalFDM]

Corso Marche said:

If it doesn't contain too much copyrighted music then open any number of the online websites for downloading YT videos in an incognito/private browsing window on your phone. Paste the URL to the YT video and hit whatever Start/Next button there is, and download the clip to your phone from the browser.
Saves faffing around having to transfer it from your PC to your iPhone, or using iTunes etc
Quick and simple.
Alternative is to check and see if you can get a free trial of YouTube Premium.

Interested in why you said to do it in an incognito window? Surely that just stops your history being recorded on the device, it doesn’t stop your ISP from knowing what sites you’ve visited?

[feef]

OriginalFDM said:

Corso Marche said:

If it doesn't contain too much copyrighted music then open any number of the online websites for downloading YT videos in an incognito/private browsing window on your phone. Paste the URL to the YT video and hit whatever Start/Next button there is, and download the clip to your phone from the browser.
Saves faffing around having to transfer it from your PC to your iPhone, or using iTunes etc
Quick and simple.
Alternative is to check and see if you can get a free trial of YouTube Premium.

Interested in why you said to do it in an incognito window? Surely that just stops your history being recorded on the device, it doesn’t stop your ISP from knowing what sites you’ve visited?

Correct.

To hide your activity from the ISP you'd want to use something like the TOR browser