In case you thought that VLC is good only for playing videos, you are wrong. VLC player is an extremely customizable and powerful media player that allows you to play various video formats. The player has a workaround that can be used to download YouTube videos
While it isn’t a completely straightforward solution compared to other tools in this guide, VLC is something that most of us have installed on our Windows-based PCs.
Here are the steps you need to follow to download a video from YouTube online:
- Copy the URL of the YouTube video you want to download from the address bar of your browser.
- Launch VLC and click on the Media Menu. From the drop-down list that appears, click on the Open Network Stream option or use the Ctrl + N shortcut.
- Once you are done, paste the URL of the video that we have copied from the browser and Play. Head over to Tools > Codec Information and copy the URL in the Source box on the bottom.
- This new URL is temporary and can be used to play the video in your browser. Go back to your browser and play the video using the newly copied URL. You will be able to see the “Download” option on the bottom right of the screen.
One thing you should know is that VLC will always download the video at a maximum resolution of 1080P. Also, you cannot convert the video to your desired format using VLC. All things considered, this is not practical if you want to download multiple videos at once. But, it might come in handy if you are someone who only downloads once in while.