Keepvid alternative

[mariush]

Regarding the recent "Keepvid shut down" video.

I'm simply using this Firefox extension/addon : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube_downloader_webx/

Adds a button, you click on it and select the resolution and audio quality you want and you download, straight from youtube.

Yes, youtube-dl also works well , and if you search for more than a few minutes you can find open source / free GUIs for it, so you don't have to mess with command lines.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Agree or not, it's all about controlling the narrative.
For example the demonetization of Yuotube (yes I can Spell) videos.
The takedown of opposing views etc., for example guns and foul language, while Hollywood runs amok with them.
They wouldn't want you to have a copy of that unapproved video that the "overlords" of good taste have deemed a danger to humanity.
The tip of the iceberg.
I have many such videos that have gone "poof" from the above source.
My 3 cents.
Rebuttal is welcome.

[janekm]

I’ve been using savefrom.net for a while (I wouldn’t feel safe using their plugin though, but the website is probably fine).

[andtfoot]

JDownloader generally works pretty well for me; it's free and constantly updated.
The only thing to watch from memory is the agree/disagree selections during the install. Some of them are for additional software (you can disagree and still continue).

[Cliff Matthews]

Regarding the recent "Keepvid shut down" video.

I'm simply using this Firefox extension/addon : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube_downloader_webx/
Adds a button, you click on it and select the resolution and audio quality you want and you download, straight from youtube.

I hope you're comfortable with that many permissions, I think any takers should think again. Just saying..

[janekm]

Regarding the recent "Keepvid shut down" video.

I'm simply using this Firefox extension/addon : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube_downloader_webx/
Adds a button, you click on it and select the resolution and audio quality you want and you download, straight from youtube.

I hope you're comfortable with that many permissions, I think any takers should think again. Just saying..

To be fair, a video download plugin probably does need (most of?) those permissions. Which is why I prefer to use websites that don't need a plugin.

[BravoV]

I hope you're comfortable with that many permissions, I think any takers should think again. Just saying..

I stopped authorizing the installation once I saw that, back to web based downloader.

[Brumby]

All too often people just accept these permission lists without thinking about whether they are actually comfortable doing so.

I am very critical of these lists and I will abandon anything that asks for too much.

[EEVblog]

I got download-yt working, but it only does 720p by default.
Also, my Synology RAID does it too which is pretty cool, but it's slow.

[mariush]

I hope you're comfortable with that many permissions, I think any takers should think again. Just saying..

The googlevideo.com stuff is required because Youtube serves some content from that domain

Access your data from youtube ... basically the plugin has to parse the page and enumerate the video formats and audio formats and indirectly would  be able to "touch" user info

Exchange messages with other programs ... it's because the plugin can download video and audio separately (as Youtube downloads them in browser), for example WEBM for video and Opus for audio, and after they both download, it uses ffmpeg.exe (you can select path to it in the extension settings) to mux these two into a MKV container, or MP4 (if you chose h264 and AAC or MP3 for example)

Download files and read download history etc ... Display notifications...  video and audio files downloads are started and can go on for minutes, the extension simply polls the download manager to see when the file downloads are complete in order to know when to start muxing video and audio into a container using ffmpeg (if you chose to mux the two parts). So it needs to access download history to be aware of download status of each stream.

Access browser tabs ... well it has to parse the content of your youtube page to detect the youtube video ID and enumerate available resolutions and all that.

You can find the extension in your profile once you install it, on my computer it's {f73df109-8fb4-453e-8373-f59e61ca4da3}.xpi

It's a plain zip file, so you can simply rename the extension to zip (or just use a software like 7zip which ignores extension) and extract the contents and then you can check the javascript code inside the extension for any access to external sites (to see if it sends data somewhere or not)

[CoffsHackerSpace]

i Know a quicker way
by using VLC
5min video download in under a minute
i Have attached images of the walk through