The YouTube video sharing platform is accessible on computers and mobile devices. Most people activate a YouTube app on their smartphone and watch videos from it directly. The problem is they need a strong Wi-Fi connection to watch the videos or else they are not viewable. But this can be circumvented if you download the videos before you lose your Wi-Fi connection.
For example, suppose there are many YouTube videos that you’d like to watch, but you don’t have the time to watch them. A simple solution would be to download the videos onto your mobile device and watch them later when you have more time. Since this might be a time when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection, you’ll still be able to view downloaded videos on your smartphone without the connection.
The internet offers a lot of tutorials about how to download YouTube videos on your laptop or iPhone. But what about if you have an Android device? There are at least 7 tips you should learn for downloading YouTube videos on your Android device. Many of these tips require you to download software. Use your best judgment as to which one is right for you.
1) Sign up for YouTube Premium
YouTube Premium is a paid membership which gives you special privileges not available to free members. Some of those benefits include ad-free videos and the ability to download and watch videos offline. The ads technically can be avoided with the free adblocker tool on Google Chrome. But to download videos and watch them offline, you need a Premium membership.
First, you’ll need to download the YouTube mobile app for Android. Now sign in to your YouTube account and upgrade to a Premium membership if you have not already done so. Once you have Premium membership, you can start navigating to the YouTube videos you want to download.
The download process is simple. Begin watching a YouTube video on your mobile app. There will be a download icon under the video player. The icon looks like a grey circle with a white arrow pointing down to a horizontal line. Tap the download icon, and you will be asked to choose the video quality that you want. Choose the video quality, such as 320p, 720p, or 1080p.
The download will begin. You can continue watching the video at the moment as you wait for the download to complete. Once you see the download icon turn blue with a white checkmark in it, you will know the download has finished. When you’re ready to view the videos offline, go to the Library tab in the mobile app. You’ll see a list of all the downloaded videos. Tap the video you want to watch.
2) Download YouTube Go
YouTube Go is an Android app developed by Google. It is designed for lower quality Android smartphones without a lot of impressive specifications. You can use YouTube Go to download your favorite YouTube videos quickly and easily. It is perfectly legal software and does not require you to pay any money. It is completely free.
What’s even better is that you’re not required to sign up for YouTube Premium. You can download videos without being a Premium subscriber. There are no restrictions placed on what you can download and how much you can download. It won’t take long to download onto your Android smartphone.
3) Purchase an Android Phone with 32GB+ Storage Space
YouTube video download sizes are usually quite large. They could be anywhere from 200MB to over 2GB per video, depending on the quality of the videos. For instance, if you come across a 4K video that is 10 minutes long, the download size could be 4 or 5GB. If you have 16GB of internal storage on your phone, that one download could eat up 25% of your storage.
If you want to play it safe, purchase an Android smartphone with 32GB of internal space or higher. Then it can hold more video content without requiring an external memory source. Of course, you can always elect to store your YouTube videos onto a microSD card or external hard drive. Your smartphone would need to have a lot for a microSD card.
4) Download from the URL
Do you want to bypass downloading a mobile app or purchasing a new smartphone? If so, you can download a YouTube video from the URL address. There are online platforms, such as ClipConverter.cc, which let you download videos from YouTube URLs for free. It is a website, so you’ll 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 presents a small video URL box and conversion format selection. Enter the YouTube video URL into the video URL box on the page. Choose a conversion format for the final videos that you will download. You can choose MP3, M4A, AAC, MP4, AVI, 3GP, MOV, and MKV.
Now click or tap the “Continue” button. Verify the format you selected and then choose the “Start” button. You’ll see the conversion process begin. It could take anywhere from a few minutes to several minutes for the conversion to be completed. After it is completed, you will be presented with a temporarily downloadable link. Make sure you download the video from the link and store it on your smartphone’s private folder.
5) Choose Low-Quality Resolution
One trick around massive YouTube video downloads is to choose low quality resolution if the download option is available. For instance, if you use the YouTube Premium option, you can select the video’s HD quality. Obviously, big 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 won’t be able to see how many subscribers the content creator has on their channel either. If you want to know how to see subscribers on YouTube, the answer is simple. Find a Wi-Fi hotspot and log back onto the internet. Then you can see the total subscribers of a particular channel.
7) Don’t Download Everything
It can be addictive to download YouTube videos. You might come across many videos that you’d like to keep and take with you everywhere. But you have a limited amount of space on your smartphone, so you can’t take it all with you. The best advice is to download the videos you like the most. Then you can conserve more space on your smartphone.