I spend a lot of time on YouTube. Many videos are so great that I want to keep them on my iPhone Camera Roll forever. Therefore, I have learned 5 methods to download YouTube to MP4 on iPhone or iPad after some research. Now, I am going to share it with you.

Actually, you can use some of the stock apps provided by Apple to download YouTube videos. Of course, you can also use a dedicated YouTube Downloader app for iOS to do it. If needed, you can also download private YouTube videos.

YouTube Downloader Shortcut

UniConverter - Video Converter. Get the Best MP4 to YouTube Converter: iSkysoft MP4 to YouTube converter help you upload MP4 to YouTube by converting the YouTube compatible formats. Its build-in video editor allows you to trim, crop, rotate, watermark, add effects and subtitles, before uploading MP4 to YouTube. How to download MP4 video from YouTube fastest 1 Paste the YouTube link or enter keywords in the search box. 2 Choose MP4 output format and video quality then and click 'Download' button 3 Wait a few seconds for the conversion to complete MP4 and download the file to your device.

The first method I recommend is using the Shortcuts app. It is on your iPhone if your phone is running iOS 13 or a newer version. However, many people don’t know what it is for. Shortcuts is automation for iOS that can help you do many things automatically. Downloading YouTube videos is just one out of many.

There is a little learning curve to create a shortcut to download YouTube videos from scratch, but you don’t have to because there are many custom shared shortcuts that you can get from the internet.

The one I recommend is called Loader.to created by Alexandr Fedyanin. It allows you to choose frame rate from 240p to 8k while downloading YouTube videos. You can even use it to download YouTube playlists.

To get this shortcut, you just open this link in safari. If you have never used any shortcuts, you need to first Enable Untrusted Shortcuts in Settings.

To download a YouTube video, you can copy the URL and run this shortcut. You can also go to YouTube app and tap the Share button below the video that you want to download and select the Loader shortcut from the share sheet.

During the process, you will be asked to choose video or audio and the quality to download. When the video is downloaded, you can open your Photos app on your iPhone or iPad to watch it. If you choose to download YouTube videos in 4K or 8K, the video will be downloaded as WEBM instead of MP4.

Convert YouTube to MP4 Online

Another quick method would be to download YouTube videos online. If your iPhone (iPad) is running iOS 13 (iPadOS 13) or newer version, you can download files with Safari Safari. If your iOS device is running an old version of iOS, then you can get the free app Documents by Readdle, which enables you to download and manage files on iPhone or iPad.

You probably know many online YouTube Downloaders. If you don’t have a preferred one, I suggest Loader. because it is free and supports up to 8K videos.

This web app is quite easy to use. All you need to do is paste the YouTube URL and click the Download Button. By default, the format is set to MP3, you can change it to MP4. If you input a YouTube playlist URL, you can also specify the start index and end index to download some videos in the playlist in go one. You can download 10 videos at most in the playlist at once.

In Safari Settings, you can change the downloads folder to the Downloads folder on iCloud Drive or on iPhone. You can tap the Share button from the Downloads folder to save the video to iPhone Camera Roll.

Best Media Downloader App for iPhone

If you prefer higher download speed or download lots of YouTube videos to MP4, I recommend a dedicated app, Loader. This app is barely known to Apple users. Otherwise, it might get removed from AppStore because downloading YouTube videos with third-party service or apps is against YouTube Users Guidelines.

You can download Loader with this link. If you search for it in AppStore, you may not find the right one. Loader is a multi-source media downloader app for iPhone or iPad. Besides YouTube, you can use it to download videos and music from Facebook, Deezer, SoundCloud, and many more sites.

Within the Loader app, you just paste the YouTube URL and tap the search button to load the download options. The app will load the thumbnail and give you the option to choose a video frame to download the video. As you can see from the screenshots, you can also download the audio only version.

You can also toggle on the Private Mode option to download content that requires login, namely private YouTube videos. By the way, this app contains ads, but you can upgrade to premium to remove ads.

YouTube-DL on iOS

Youtube-dl is an open-source program for downloading videos from YouTube and many other websites (1000+). It is command line based though. If you don’t mind, you can also run it on iOS with the help of a free app called A-Shell.

It is easier than you think. You can refer to the steps to see how it works.

1. Get A-Shell app from appStore. .

2. Within A-Shell app, type the following command and tap return:

3. When the installation is complete, you can run the command “youtube-dl” followed by the URL of the YouTube video that you want to download. By default, all videos will be downloaded as MP4. For example:

You need to replace the YouTube URL with the video that you want to download as MP4. You can also input a playlist or YouTube channel URL. If you want to download videos in 1080P or higher with sound, you should also install ffmpeg. To learn more, you can read this post to run youtube-dl on iOS.

When the download progress is complete, you can open the Files app, tap On My iPhone > A-Shell folder to find the downloaded video.

Download YouTube Clips

If you only need to download some YouTube clips, you should try Clipbox. It is a free app that allows you to download video clips from YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. You can download it for free from AppStore.

Once installed, you can paste a YouTube video link to Clipbox, this app will load the video and enable you to trim the video and save the trimmed video to your iPhone. If needed, you can repost a YouTube clip, your trimmed video, to Instagram or other social media platforms.

As its name suggested, Clipbox only allows you to save YouTube clips, not full videos. The free version can download up to 30-second clips. If you like how it works, you can upgrade to the pro version to save clips up to 60 seconds.

Conclusion

All these 5 methods are free to use. You can download as many YouTube videos as you want on iPhone or iPad. If you don’t want to leave the YouTube app, I suggest you use the Shortcuts method to run it from Share Sheet. In that case, you can download YouTube video on iPhone while the video is playing.

Two parts involved: 1) Convert downloaded YouTube video to MP4, 2) Download YouTube and convert to MP4.

YouTube.com is one of the most popular video hosting website on the planet. It's full of interesting content and useful information. You can upload your local video clips onto the YouTube to share with you friends around the world, or embed the YouTube video on your site by using a link or by inserting HTML code. If you've ever watched a video online, there is a good chance it was a YouTube video.

However, you might already download a video (4k, 1080p, 720p, 480p) from YouTube but the file is not in the format you want to playback on a device like iPhone, iPad, or embed for a presentation, or other potential uses. Whatever the situation is, you can convert the downloaded YouTube videos to mp4 videos on Mac (or PC machine), which short for MPEG-4 Part 14 multimedia format, works everywhere on anything. Find more about how to burn downloaded TV shows onto a Blu-ray disc for watching on big TV.

Have a good YouTube to MP4 converter to convert the YouTube videos to MP4 and other formats for Mac and Windows can be pretty useful, especially if you have a large collection of downloaded YouTube videos in quality 720p, Full HD 1080p, Quad HD 1440p and Ultra HD 2160p 4k.

There is a great selection of YouTube converters out there that will let you convert YouTube video files from their native format into mp4 (h.264/mpeg-4) or something more accessible. If you happen to have a Windows or Mac computer, the Video Converter is the way you go.

for Windows | for Mac

It converts your local movies and downloaded footage from YouTube to MP4 format on both Mac and Windows, and supports exporting for other popular file formats like MOV, WMV, MKV, AVI, MPEG, H.264. It also helps users to convert video into suitable video presets for various devices.

Note: this video converter is included in an all-in-one package, which there is also a video downloading module available for you to download videos from 100+ video hosting services including YouTube.com site.

I'll start by explaining exactly about how to convert video files grabbed from YouTube into mpeg-4/h.264 MP4 video format on Mac and Windows computer.

Part 1: How to convert YouTube video to a MP4 format for Mac / PC

Stage 1 – Install the all-in-one package and open it

After you complete the installation, launch it.

The interface is pretty straightforward. You can find the 'Convert' and 'Download' functions on the top menu.

Stage 2 – Select source files

Open the local folder on your Mac or PC where saves your downloaded YouTube videos, simply drag and drop them into the middle section of the program. It should look like the screenshot below.

Or, Click the 'Add File' button on the top menu, this opens a dialog box asking you select the YouTube videos you want to convert to MP4 video format. You can even add a whole folder of YouTube files.

Tip: this YouTube to MP4 converter for Mac/PC accepts nearly any type of video & audio file as input. you can add files with extension such as *.mkv, *.vob, *.mpg, *.avi, *.mov to mp4 format.

Stage 3 – Choose the desired output profile

Next, you will need to choose the output file format you want to convert the YouTube video on the Mac or PC.

The first time you use the program, the default output profile for all of conversion will be MP4 format, so here you may do nothing. But you can still experience the full process of choosing output format.

What you need is click the 'Profile' drop-down menu on the lower left-hand side, this will display a Format selection panel. It should look like the screenshot below.

In General Video category, pick 'MP4 Video' as the output format.

Stage 3.1 – Encoding Settings (optional)

If you are an experienced user, you can click the 'Settings' next to 'Profile', then a new panel opens where there are various configuration options for the export. Here I just leave the settings to the default, which is fine enough.

Stage 3.2 – Use presets

This YouTube to MP4 converter for Mac/PC also includes a group of useful preset profiles for specific devices with minimal user interaction. It's really cconvenient for those who want to playback (YouTube) videos on a portable device.

If you device happen to appear on the list, simply click to select it.

Stage 4 – Edit the video (optional)

On the top toolbar, there is an EDIT icon available for you to enter the video editing mode (Clip, Crop, Watermark, Enhance, Effect and 3D).

It is optional, you can ignore this step.

Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 Mac

Stage 5 – Start the conversion

With the above steps made, you're ready to begin to convert downloaded videos from YouTube to MP4 file format on Mac OS X or Windows platform, with a click of blue 'Convert' button.

The whole process of converting YouTube to MP4 on a Mac or PC will take a few minutes or hours, depending on the file size of source video, the output encoding settings, your computer's power and how many source files you are ready to process.

That is it!

You may be interested in how to burn Photos slideshows to Blu-ray on Mac & PC.

Part 2: How to get videos off YouTube and convert to MP4 file

As for downloading video from video sharing sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, VEVO, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Break, AOL and others, there are plenty of browser extensions and applications available for you to get the job done.

For mainstream browsers like Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and chrome, you can go to TOOLS > ADD-ONS and search 'Video Downloader' or such kind of keywords, there will be a huge number of extensions you can find. If you have Firefox running on your computer, 'Video Download Helper' is one of the most popular extensions that enables you to grab videos from YouTube and other sites and save them to your hard drive. Some of extensions even have extra options to convert the downloaded (YouTube) videos to MP4 and other formats for Mac OS X and Windows system.

There is also a list of different applications that let you download YouTube video or other sites' videos, some of which even gives you the ability to convert those downloaded (YouTube) videos to format you want such as MP4, MOV, AVI, MKV. In today's discussion, we'll use a program called AllMyTube, an all-in-one stop solution. With it, downloading YouTube video and converting into MP4 couldn't be simpler. It supports grabbing online videos from 1000+ video sharing sites in 1080p, 720p, 480p quality.

for Windows | for Mac

Now, let's take a look at how to download videos from YouTube site for example, and convert to a MP4 file format on a Mac or Windows machine.

Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 Mac

1. Launch Safari, Chrome or Firefox on your Mac (Internet Explorer or Firefox on Windows), then open YouTube.com site and play the video(s) that you want to convert to MP4. When you play the video, a download button will automatically appear on the corner of the window. See screenshot below:

2. Next, choose one of three ways to begin to download videos and save locally on your hard drive.

A) You can simply click the DOWNLOAD button on the corner;

B) Copy the YouTube video address and then click the 'Paste URL' button on the upper left side of program window to paste it onto.

C) Alternatively, you directly drag and drop the video address to the window of this Mac program.

3. After the video files(s) downloaded, you then switch the category from 'Downloading' to 'Downloaded' where lists all of your downloaded videos from YouTube.

Next, highlight the video you want to convert to MP4 and click the corresponding 'Convert' button at the right side of list.

It will then bring up a pop-up panel which asking you to choose the target video format.

In our case, we just need to get the downloaded YouTube video converted into MP4, so we pick MP4 from 'Format' tab. After that, click 'OK' to start converting YouTube videos to MP4 files in Mac.

That's it!

Please note that the program has option to download and convert YouTube video automatically. On the upper right-hand side of interface, there is a 'Download and Convert' button you can turn on.

Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 Mac Free

• YouTube to MOV for Mac - transcode videos from YouTube to MOV file for using in Macs