Intro

In this post, I will outline how to download a video from Youtube – without having a Youtube Premium subscription. This is a step-by-step guide that will walk you through exactly what’s needed to download the video.

1. Go to the YouTube URL

Go to the URL of the video you want to download in a modern web browser on a desktop or tablet computer.

Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrzTNw7ouLU

2. Pause the video

Let the video play for a few seconds to establish a data stream, then PAUSE the video so that it is not playing anymore.

3. Open the Browser Dev Tools

There are many ways to open Dev Tools in modern web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and MS Edge. Here are a few of those ways:

Mac OS

Command + Option + J

Windows

Control + Shift + I

Or you can right-click on a blank area of the page and select “Inspect”

You can also click “Show Developer Tools” from the web browser menu, normally under More Tools > Developer Tools

4. Select the “Network” tab

In the developer tools, at the top, select the “Network” tab and also make sure “All” is selected under the data filter.

5. Open link “videoplayback?expire…”

In the Dev Tools, on the Network tab, the requests are shown in the boxes in the middle of the page. Look for a request name called:

"videoplayback?expire..."

Find the one that is closest to the bottom of the list. If you don’t pause the video, this list will continue to populate. Be sure to pause the video to make this easier. Right-Click on the name “videoplayback?expire…” and select “open in a new tab”

Tip: Step #5 and #6 need to be done as quick as possible. If the video does not appear after doing these steps, try clearing the cache, refreshing the page, or an incognito browser.

6. Remove everything starting at “&range=..” to the end of the URL

In the URL of the new tab, delete the last few variables and parameters of the URL. The URL variables that need to be removed are “&range, &rn, and &rbuf“. It will look similar to this in the URL:

&range=2215198-2361743&rn=53&rbuf=6746

You will delete everything from the URL starting at &range. AFter this you should have the correct URL to access the video.

7. Download video

Click enter to visit the new link. There will be a 3-dot menu on the video player where you can select download the video.