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Anonymous B joined in and replied with this 4 months ago, 1 week later[^][v]#1,391,353
Since I’m not writing to optimize this list for Google, I can just give you the answer!
The best YouTube downloaders for Windows (and beyond)
Here are the best YouTube downloaders -- based on my personal experience:
The best YouTube downloader for Windows is Stacher. It’s free, open-source, and simple. It’s an easy-to-use graphical application that does the setup for you.
The best YouTube downloader for the command line is yt-dlp. Use it if you want to get your hands dirty! (Stacher is cool because it provides a graphical interface and does all the hard work for you.)
The best YouTube download for Mac and Linux? Also Stacher! It’s cross-platform.
The best YouTube downloader on the web is Cobalt.tools -- or at least it used to be. It looks like Google is blocking it right now. Until it comes back, I recommend other tools. (Edit: Apparently there are still Cobalt instances that work — see this comment! Thanks, ZedK.)
The best YouTube downloader for Android is NewPipe. This third-party YouTube app has a built-in download tool.
Use any of these and you’ll get a video file you can back up, archive, and do whatever you want with. It’s yours to preserve.