YouTube is testing a new functionality for the desktop website, which will allow users to download videos.
Until now, YouTube only allows downloading videos in the mobile apps of iOS and Android, and only to users of the Premium version of payment. The great advantage of this function is that we can watch videos anywhere, without having to have a fast enough Internet connection; it is ideal for downloading videos and watching them while traveling, for example.
Now, it is possible that this video download functionality will reach the YouTube website . The company is already testing a limited number of accounts, which can already download videos to your computer.
The novelty is part of the “experimental features” and will therefore only be available for a limited time. To activate it, we must have YouTube Premium and access the page to activate functions ; however, in Spain it does not seem to be available yet, and only users in the United States seem to be able to activate it. From that page we can also activate other experimental functions, such as “Image in Image” in iOS, which allows us to have a floating video on our iPhone while we do other things.
Once activated, the download feature appears as a new button just below the video, along with the share or save-to-list buttons. As soon as we press it, the video download starts; when finished, from then on the video will be available in the new download section, youtube.com/feed/downloads from where we can watch it as many times as we want offline. The only requirement is that we connect at least once in 30 days to keep the video.
This only works in Chromium-based browsers; that is, in Chrome, Edge, Opera and others, but it will not work in Firefox or Safari; although at least, it is compatible with most operating systems such as Windows, macOS or ChromeOS.
The ‘experiment’ will last until October 19, and at this time it is not clear when it will be implemented for everyone. This is a striking ad, considering that YouTube has struggled a lot against programs that download videos from its platform; the difference is that this function does not allow us to access the videos from outside the web browser, so there is no danger that they can be copied.
