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
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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
Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 On Mac Free
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.
How To Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 On Mac Free
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.