Is it legal to download YouTube videos?

It depends on who owns the video and what permission you have. A plain-language look at copyright, platform terms, and when downloading is fine.

The honest answer is it depends on the video — not on the tool, not on the file format, and not on what you intend to do afterwards. Two separate things are in play: copyright law, which governs who may copy a work, and YouTube’s terms of service, which govern how you may use their platform. A given download can satisfy one and not the other.

This is general information to help you think about the question, not legal advice. Copyright rules differ substantially between countries. If something matters commercially, ask a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

The two rulebooks

Copyright law

A video is a creative work, and by default its creator holds exclusive rights over copying and distributing it. Downloading makes a copy. So unless you hold those rights, have permission, or fall under a specific exception in your country’s law, the copy is unauthorised.

Exceptions do exist and they vary enormously. Some countries have a private-copying allowance; some have fair dealing for research, criticism or news reporting; the United States has fair use, which is a flexible four-factor test rather than a checklist. None of these is a blanket permission, and none of them is decided by how you feel about the video.

Platform terms of service

Separately, YouTube’s terms restrict downloading content except through features they provide, such as their own offline mode. Breaching terms of service is a contractual matter between you and the platform rather than a criminal one — but it is still a real restriction, and it applies even to videos you would otherwise be free to copy.

Where it is clearly fine

These are the cases the converter is built for.

Your own uploads. You hold the rights. Retrieving a master copy of something you made and published is the least ambiguous case there is.
Content licensed for reuse. Creative Commons licences (YouTube supports CC BY) explicitly permit copying, usually with attribution. Check which licence and follow its terms.
Public domain material. Works whose copyright has expired, or that were never eligible — many government productions, for instance.
Content the rights holder has cleared for you. A client sending footage, a colleague sharing a recording of a talk you both gave, an organisation giving written permission. Keep the permission in writing.

Where it is clearly not

Music you do not own. Commercial tracks are among the most actively enforced material anywhere. “I already bought the album” is not a licence to make a new copy from a different source.
Films, series and paid content. Including clips and excerpts.
Anything behind a login, paywall or membership. Private videos, members-only uploads, unlisted content shared in confidence.
Redistribution. Re-uploading someone else’s video, or bundling it into something you sell, is a different and considerably more serious act than watching it offline.

The grey middle

Most real questions live here: an educational video you want offline for a flight, a conference talk you want to quote in a review, a tutorial you are worried will disappear.

There is no clean answer, but a few things shift the balance. Copying a short excerpt for commentary sits more comfortably than copying a whole work. Personal offline viewing sits more comfortably than sharing. Non-commercial sits more comfortably than commercial. And “it might get deleted” is a genuine motivation but not, on its own, a legal basis.

When the situation is genuinely unclear, the reliable move is unglamorous: ask the creator. Most people who publish educational content are happy to grant permission for a specific use, and an email saying yes settles the question completely.

What this tool does and does not do

We built the converter around a deliberate constraint: it does not defeat anything. It does not bypass sign-in walls, it does not strip DRM, and it does not circumvent privacy settings. Point it at a private or members-only video and it returns an authorization error rather than finding another way in.

That is not a limitation we are apologising for — it is the line that separates a legitimate media-processing tool from a circumvention tool, and circumvention carries its own legal exposure in many jurisdictions quite apart from the copyright question.

We also do not host a library or index anyone’s content. The tool processes only the URL you submit, and you are responsible for having the right to submit it. Our terms of service set that out, and our DMCA page explains how rights holders can report a problem.

A short checklist

Before converting, it is worth being able to answer yes to one of these:

Did I create and upload this video?
Does it carry a licence that permits copying, and am I following that licence?
Is it in the public domain?
Do I have permission from the rights holder, ideally in writing?
Does a specific exception in my country’s law clearly cover what I am about to do?

If the answer to all five is no, the sensible course is to leave it. There is usually a legitimate route to the same outcome — an official download, a licensed copy, or simply asking.