Extracting YouTube Videos to Watch/Listen to Offline
Often times when traveling I try to make the most of the hours in the car by listening to audio lectures on relevant biblical and theological studies. One of the great aspects of YouTube is that it provides a place where many people and groups will upload lectures from conferences or lecture series. The difficulty, at least for me, is finding the time to sit in front of a device and watch the lecture. When I am traveling I do not want my iPhone playing YouTube videos for hours and racking up astronomical charges for using LTE. Also, while driving I do not need video at all just the audio. So how can you go about downloading the audio (or video) from YouTube so you can play it without streaming?
I used to have a convoluted and hard to explain method for downloading YouTube or Vimeo videos, extracting the audio, and putting them on my iPhone for listening but I just came across a free program that does this in a jiffy: 4K Download.
They have several different programs but the ones relevant to downloading YouTube videos are:
Each one allows you to copy the YouTube (or Vimeo) link paste it into the program and it will download the video or audio depending on which program you are using. You can even find or create a playlist (less than 25 videos) and just paste the playlist URL and download all the content right there. This is great for downloading audio for travel, showing videos in class so you don’t have to worry about Wi-Fi issues, and just storing video and audio on your mobile devices so you don’t have to stream the content.