Flawless Offline Viewing: Your Guide to Mobile Video Downloads for iDevices

A Complete Guide to Downloading YouTube Videos to iPhone or iPad

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

It is no secret that the iPhone and the iPad are the most popular smartphone and tablet respectively. You could argue that Samsung has impressive sales and is almost at par with Apple but in regards to sheer dominance or superiority, the South Korea based conglomerate bows down to the American tech juggernaut. YouTube is indisputably the most popular video hosting and sharing site in the world. It doesn’t help that YouTube is owned by Google, the search engine giant that also owns Android which powers all popular Samsung smartphones at the moment. As a result, what you get is a tad incompatible with YouTube and iPhone or iPad. Downloading YouTube videos is very simple if you are using an Android smartphone or a Windows computer. It is not so when you are using an iPhone, iPad or even a Mac.

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Fortunately, there are ways you can download YouTube videos to iPhone or iPad, and we aren’t talking about YouTube’s promise of offline video streaming. Here is a complete guide.

Note: We resolutely oppose all forms of copyright-infringing downloads. This tutorial is only for downloading YouTube videos/audio materials from your own channel.

First, you need a video downloader

You need a third party app which is approved by Apple and available in App Store. There are quite a few free video downloader apps that you can check. But do make sure that the app is active or usable right now. Apple is a tad infamous for deleting some of the apps from its store from time to time. If that happens after you have installed and started using a video downloader, then you can just remove it and opt for another. Most of these free video downloader apps will save your videos within the app. Some would add them to the videos in your Camera Roll. You can use AirPlay to watch the videos if you have an Apple TV. The videos saved by downloader apps will not be found in the native Videos app of iPhone or iPad. When you search for such apps, use ‘video downloader’ or ‘YouTube downloader’ as the keywords.

Find a suitable app, download it for free and install it

Some of the downloader apps will have premium or pro versions. You don’t need to pay before you have used the free or basic version. Once installed, start the app. Most of these apps have a built-in browser which should allow you to access YouTube. In most cases, you would get to m.youtube.com. If there is no default address, then save the mobile version of YouTube as the default URL. On iPad, you can go for <www.youtube.com>.

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Downloading Youtube videos to iPhone or iPad

In all likelihood, you are familiar with how YouTube works. Search for a video that you wish to download, pick the one you want from the search results and it would automatically start to play. In some cases, you may have to click the play button or tap on the video thumbnail for it to start playing. As the video begins to stream or buffer, you would find an icon of the app, usually bobbing or hovering over the screen playing the video. You can tap on this icon, which could be a disk sign or the logo of the app. As you tap on it, you would have a popup that will prompt you to download the video that you are watching.

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Almost all video downloader apps for iPhone and iPad will allow you to watch these videos offline. Some apps may need an internet connection to open but the videos saved will not require any internet to be played and replayed.

Given the fact that there are many video downloader apps and you cannot be sure of the experience of any, you will have to indulge in a bit of trial and error to find the best one.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

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