Why I can't download youtube videos to computer?

Description of the issue:
I am a new user to Brave browser and Chrome was my favorite in the past but it consumes too much RAM and CPU. In addition, Brave has much better privacy protection.

In fact, I have an active youtube premium subscription but the download button is not responding when I am trying to download youtube videos to my computer.

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Open the YouTube video link in my Brave browser.
  2. Sign in my YouTube Premium account.
  3. Click the Download menu below the video. But the download does not start.

Expected result:
The video should be downloaded automatically when clicking the Download button.

Brave Version( check About Brave):
Version 1.71.123 Chromium: 130.0.6723.116 (Official Build) (x86_64)

P.S. Much appreciated if you could help me fix this issue or suggest another workaround to download youtube videos to a computer?

Thanks

Check if the youtube premium subscription is expired or not. By default, the download button is actionable when clicking on it. Also try to restart the computer and try again to download youtube videos to computer using the Brave browser.

1 Like

Downloading YouTube videos to computer through the YouTube interface, even with a YouTube Premium subscription, is typically limited to mobile devices and does not officially support downloading videos directly to a computer. The download feature for YouTube Premium allows users to download videos to their mobile devices, but this functionality is not available directly through the web browser on a PC. Hence, the download button may appear non-functional or may not work as expected.

Nothing’s worse than getting hyped for a video download only to find out your hard drive is full halfway through. Always check your disk space before starting download YouTube videos to computer. You can use Windows Explorer to see how much space you have left. A good rule of thumb is to keep at least 15% of your disk space free, so you don’t hit that dreaded “Low Disk Space” warning.

As far as I know, there are plenty of youtube video downloader software, websites, browser extensions and mobile apps. You can use one of tools to download youtube videos to laptop or PC if the premium subscription trick does not work in your brave browser.

Also make sure the youtube videos you are trying to download is publicly available. Private videos are not eligible for download for sure!

I was struggling today as well. The issue is YT makes changes in its code, and then the video downloader programs need updating. I find it crazy that this seems to happen 3-4 times a year!!! Added to this, can be issues with what version of Windows is being run. IN my case today, a family member is still running a Win8 version, and the latest update of the downloader software uses a dll which is not compatible with the older versions of Windows! I’m on Win10 and the update of the downloader was what I needed to do, so all is good working for me again. But, not for my family member! My purpose in downloading is only to preserve history and information for my personal reference, never for public display nor distribution.

Of course, only the public videos, never the private ones.

[NOTE: the best protection from keeping others from downloading your private videos is to host them over at Vimeo, where they provide privately listed videos as Vimeo hides/protects the URL so nobody can download your content! – recording those is a no-no!]

I hope the information I’ve shared on updating the 3rd party app, and compatibility with the version of Windows being run, will help others looking to solve the same issues!