The Best YouTube Downloaders, According to Reddit
People add the word "reddit" to this search for one reason: the normal results are a wall of near-identical converter sites, and it's impossible to tell which ones are safe. Reddit threads are where real users compare notes. The good news is that across r/youtubedl, r/DataHoarder and r/software, the answer has been remarkably stable for years — and it isn't any of those converter sites.
The short answer: yt-dlp
Ask this question in almost any technical subreddit and the reply is yt-dlp — a free, open-source command-line program. It downloads in the best quality YouTube offers, handles playlists and channels, keeps subtitles and chapters, and is updated within days whenever YouTube changes something. There are no ads, no caps and no upsells, because there's nothing being sold.
The catch is the interface: there isn't one. You type commands into a terminal. A basic download is
genuinely just yt-dlp <video URL>, but installing it and fixing the occasional error
message is more fiddling than many people want. That's the honest trade-off, and it's why the rest of
this list exists.
If you don't want a command line
- Stacher — a free desktop app (Windows/Mac/Linux) that is essentially a friendly face on top of yt-dlp. Frequently recommended on Reddit as "yt-dlp without the terminal".
- Seal — a free, open-source Android app built on the same engine. The usual Reddit answer for downloading on a phone; it isn't in the Play Store, so it's installed from GitHub or F-Droid.
- jDownloader 2 — an older free download manager that predates yt-dlp. Still works and still gets mentioned, though the installer tries to bundle extra software if you click through carelessly.
- 4K Video Downloader — the paid option Reddit tolerates. Clean interface, but the free tier is capped per day and playlists sit behind the paid version. Fine if you'd rather pay than tinker.
Web-based: fine for one-off saves
For a single video, opening a terminal is overkill. The web option Redditors actually speak well of is cobalt.tools — open source, no ads, no fake buttons. The consistent warning in every thread is about the rest of the category: most "free YouTube downloader" sites surround one real button with several fake ones, and redirect through ad pages on each click. If a downloader site opens pop-ups, close it — there's always another site, and your patience is what they monetize.
Shorts, clips and playlists
These three searches have their own Reddit threads, but the answer collapses into the same one:
- Shorts are ordinary videos in a vertical frame — every tool above takes a Shorts link as-is.
- Clips (youtube.com/clip/…) are trickier: a clip is just timestamps pointing into the full video. yt-dlp can handle clip links; most simple sites can't, and will either fail or hand you the whole video.
- Playlists are where yt-dlp and Stacher shine — paste the playlist URL and walk away. Web tools generally do one video at a time, and 4K Video Downloader charges for it.
Is downloading from YouTube allowed?
YouTube's terms of service say no, outside of the app's own offline feature and YouTube Premium. In practice the risk lands on the download sites, not on individuals saving a clip — but it's your call to make, knowing that. Two lines worth drawing regardless: content you paid for through DRM (YouTube Movies, Premium-only streams) is protected, and circumventing that protection is a different thing from saving a public video — no tool here does it, and neither do we. And if you're downloading a creator's work to republish it, that's a copyright problem no downloader can launder for you.
Why hhhdownload doesn't do YouTube
hhhdownload is a paste-a-link downloader for Reddit, Pinterest, Tumblr, Rumble and other platforms — but not YouTube, on purpose. YouTube blocks third-party downloaders aggressively, and a tool that works on Monday and fails on Friday is worse than no tool. For YouTube, use yt-dlp or one of the apps above; for the platforms we do support, we'd rather be the thing that always works.