How to Listen to Your Favorite YouTube Tracks Offline
Broadway superstars Lin-Manuel Miranda and Ben Platt dropped a bomb for theater fans early this morning, transforming two songs from their always-out-of-the-box musicals into a beautiful duo that you can buy or stream for free through a range of different online services likeYouTube .
While Hamilton and respected Evan Hansen fans are burning their data plans with this hot track, it’s time to rethink all the ways you can keep YouTube content offline to watch hard later.
Brief disclaimer
Don’t raise your glass to freedom when pirating music. It’s wrong and will consistently hurt the creators you love. While we’re not going to tell you what to do with the tools at your disposal, we’re also not saying that you should just break the Miranda and Platt duo . It costs $ 1.29 on iTunes or Google Play, with a portion of the proceeds going to charities such as the March to Protect Our Lives initiative.
That said, if you’re just going to waste bandwidth endlessly streaming songs to YouTube, at least save some data. (Or heck, download the free sheet music of the above arrangement and make your own amazing interpretation.)
YouTube app makes it easy … for a price
If you usually loop YouTube videos over and over on your smartphone or tablet, consider subscribing to YouTube Red. This will set you back the cost of a good salad every month, but will allow you to download videos to your device for up to 30 days – enough time to get rid of that musical obsession.
Of course, you will need the official YouTube app installed on your device ( Android | iOS ). Sign up to YouTube Red , start watching the video, and look for the save option, which should be in the same panel as the thumb up, thumb down, and share video icons. (You can also click the video hamburger icon while browsing the YouTube video list to save it for offline viewing.)
Web apps that convert YouTube videos to MP3
There are many websites with different funny names and URLs that claim to provide easy ways to convert YouTube videos to various formats. Before you start down this path, get a good ad blocker for your browser, possibly an even stronger antivirus and malware protection app.
We don’t want to wear a tin foil hat unnecessarily, but these sites can be filled with annoying ads, pop-ups, and other annoying things. Keep your conversion secret, but more importantly,keep it safe .
We’re fans of Peggo , an easy way to turn a quick YouTube video into an MP3 file for listening later. Just copy and paste the URL of the video into the website, set up the start and end points of your post you want to take (if necessary), and let it copy. Easy, with one caveat.
When I disabled my ad blocker and tried to convert the video on Peggo, the site first opened a tab with a spam link to a browser extension that I definitely didn’t want to install. After I went back to Peggo’s homepage and tried to record again, it worked. By re-enabling my ad blocker (uBlock Origin), the site did not load ugly ads or potentially malicious tabs.
Other sites that claim to offer similar features, such as ” YouTubeMP3CONVERTER “, perform worse: they will always redirect you to spam ad pages when you try to convert a file – even with an ad protection extension like uBlock Origin installed. – and you. “I will never be able to do an offline version ofmy favorite cat song .
Browser extensions that convert YouTube videos to MP3
For some strange reason, Google isn’t very keen on suggesting recommendations for Chrome extensions that let you download YouTube videos for offline viewing. I wonder why?
There are many extensions in the Chrome Web Store that promise this functionality, but most of them are poorly rated and fail the odor test. My recommendation? Find another route.
It is a little easier to convert YouTube videos to MP3 audio files in Firefox. I recommend the SmartTube add-on, which has a horizontal menu below the video description, full of different download options. This includes the Holy Grail, downloading MP3 (or M4A, or WEBM) of the video audio track only. Yes!
Third Party Apps: The Best and Easiest Way to Rip YouTube Audio
While its name sounds a little deceiving, I’m a big fan of the 4K YouTube to MP3 app available for both Windows and macOS. Its interface couldn’t be easier to use. You just need to copy the URL of the YouTube video, click on the giant “Paste Link” button in the app, and wait. The app takes a little time to work, but it will automatically start loading the video audio track in its original quality (default).
We also love the SYC2 app, which lets you do a lot more with the audio files you create, including converting them into easy-to-install ringtones. Problem? It will cost you $ 20. It’s a bit too much, especially when you can rip YouTube audio for free using 4K YouTube to MP3, or from the command line of your operating system if you’re adventurous.