How to Watch YouTube Videos Offline on PC, Mac, or Laptop

Four easy ways for you to download YouTube videos to watch offline.

How to Watch YouTube Videos Offline on PC

It's quite convenient to watch online videos on YouTube. You can either go to YouTube.com on a computer or open the YouTube app on your mobile device. However, it's not equally simple to watch YouTube videos offline.

As you may know, YouTube doesn't provide an official way to allow its users to download videos from the website. The only legal and official way to save YouTube videos to your own device is to buy YouTube Premium, which is limited to mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android phone, and tablet).

Then how can you save a YouTube video to your computer for offline viewing? The answer is: If you are looking to watch YouTube videos offline on a PC or Mac, you will need to use third-party services or tools to download YouTube videos to your computer. Afterward, you will be able to enjoy the videos without an Internet connection.

How to Watch YouTube Offline in 4 Ways

Whether you want to save offline YouTube videos in a laptop, PC, or Mac, you can use the methods detailed below to download YouTube videos to your computer.

Method 1. Save YouTube Videos for Offline Watching with a Safe YouTube Downloader

Ad-Free & Plugin-Free

Generally, a desktop video downloader will help you download videos from YouTube and many other sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Dailymotion, and more. The best video downloader for PC - EaseUS Video Downloader is such a tool.

It is a video & audio downloader that enables you to download any video or audio file you like. It works well to:

• Save videos from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and other sites to your PC.
• Download music from SoundCloud, MySpace, and more to a computer.
• Download YouTube videos to MP3 directly.

Whether you like to download a single video or save videos in bulk, you can get things done using this fast YouTube video downloader. What's more, you can choose the format and quality you like before downloading YouTube files. In a word, with the help of this tool, you can watch YouTube videos offline effortlessly.

To save a YouTube video to your computer for offline viewing:

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Video Downloader on your PC. Copy and paste the URL of the video you want to download into the searching bar. Click "Search" to proceed.

Step 2. It will open a built-in YouTube page of the video. Click the "Download" button in the bottom left to parse the video.

Step 3. In the popup, you can choose for the video format and quality, and specify a location for the downloaded video. Then click "Download" to start the downloading process.

Step 4. After the downloading process finishes, you can check the downloaded video in the option "Finished."

Disclaimer: The information provided in this guide is for personal use. EaseUS is in no way collaborated or affiliated with the video-sharing site and will never approve any copyright infringement action. The end-user should be solely responsible for their behavior.

If you're using a Mac, you can also use it to to download YouTube videos on a Mac.

Want to edit your videos by removing unwanted watermarks? If you do, utilize any one of the best free video editing software with no watermark to do it with ease. 

Method 2. Watch YouTube Videos Offline on PC or Mac with Browser Extension

Using desktop software to save a YouTube video to a computer needs the URL of the video. But if you use a browser extension, all you need to do is click the "Download" button.

After you add the YouTube video downloader extension to your browser, e.g, Chrome, you will see there is a "Download" option on the page when you play the video. Therefore, you can download videos on YouTube without copying the URL.

There are many such extensions available in the Chrome web store. Here I'd like to take one of them to show you how it works to download videos from YouTube.

Step 1. Go to https://addoncrop.com/youtube-video-downloader/ to install the YouTube downloader to your browser.

Step 2. Restart your browser and visit YouTube.com.

Step 3. Find the video you want to download for offline viewing and click to play the video.

Step 4. Now you should see a download option under the video. If it doesn't appear, click the extension icon in the menu bar.

Step 5. Click the "Download" icon to start downloading the video to your computer directly or click the "More" option and choose the quality you prefer to save the video to your computer.

Method 3. Download YouTube Videos to Watch Offline on PC or Mac with Online Tools

How to watch YouTube videos offline on PC without downloading any tool? If that's what you are thinking about, you may prefer to use an online YouTube video downloader. Online tools allow you to save a YouTube video to your PC, Mac, or laptop with a browser, which is quite convenient.

The drawbacks of online tools are also obvious. When you use an online tool, you may be bothered by annoying ads, redirections, and download failures. Given that, you should be careful while choosing an online video downloader to apply.

Here I'd like to take one of them as an example:

Step 1. Find and click the video you want to download on YouTube.

Step 2. Copy the URL of the video.

Step 3. Go to visit the online video downloader. 

Step 4. Paste the URL of the YouTube video to the address bar.

Step 5. Click "Download". Here you will be redirected to another page. Close that page and go back to the video downloader.

Step 6. Choose to download the video with or without sound and select the video quality you prefer to start downloading YouTube videos to your computer.

Step 7. When the downloading process completes, the downloaded video file will be saved in the "Downloads" folder. Go to check and watch it as you like to.

Method 4. Save a YouTube Video to Desktop or Laptop by Changing URL

The three ways above are the commonest ones to download videos from YouTube or other websites. Actually, there is one more simple and practical method to save YouTube videos to your computer for offline watching, which is to change the video URL.

There are many ways to download YouTube videos by changing the URL. Let's see how it works.

To save a YouTube video to PC for offline watching:

Step 1. On YouTube, find and play the video you want to download.

Step 2. Go to the address bar and change "youtube" in the link to "youpak".

Step 3. On the new page, click "Click here to Download this video" above the video.

Step 4. Now you could see different download options provided by the website.

Step 5. Click the download option you prefer to start saving the YouTube video to your computer.

If You Cannot Download Videos from YouTube...

There are many reasons why you can't download a video from YouTube:

• The video may be private and infer copyright issues.
• The video downloader fails to analyze the video address.
• The video downloader is currently unavailable in your region (especially for some online tools).

When you encounter such a problem, you can try all the tips to take a chance. If you still can't download the video, I'm afraid that you need to switch to another video to have a try.

The Bottom Line

It's quite easy to watch YouTube videos offline on PC, Mac, or laptop as long as you ask help from reliable video downloader tools. Some of the tools also enable you to convert YouTube videos to MP3 and provide different video formats for you to choose from. Choose the one that fits your needs most to get the video you like within minutes.