youtube-dl

Installation from official site:

sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

It's also on Ubuntu repos but you will need often to keep it up-to-date with sudo youtube-dl -U

Installation and ugrade from pip:

sudo -H pip install --upgrade youtube-dl

Usage:

youtube-dl YouTube-(or-other-website)-video-link

so it will download the video.

You can also take a look at this for very in-depth documentation on how to use it.

Minitube

Minitube is a YouTube desktop application.
With it you can watch YouTube videos in a new way: you type a keyword, Minitube gives you an endless video stream.
Minitube is not about cloning the original YouTube web interface, it aims to create a new TV-like experience.

It does not require Flash Player. From this application you can watch and download videos.

Browser addon:
http://www.clipconverter.cc/addon/

Other sites that can be used:

http://www.clipconverter.cc/
http://keepvid.com/
http://www.listentoyoutube.com/

And this software is also great:

http://www.4kdownload.com/

I think that the simplest way to download a video from YouTube, without installing any plugin or software, is with savefrom.net. And here is the video demonstrating How to download YouTube videos using the ss trick. Let's say you want to download the below video:

On your address bar, add ss in front of youtube.com and hit Enter ↵.

Now you will be redirected to savefrom.net. On your right, click on the video quality you want to download.

cclive

We are able to download free content from YouTube or other streaming sites with this easy-to-use command-line tool.

cclive is primarily a "video download tool" but it can also be used along side with video player software, like "mplayer", for viewing streamed videos instead of the Adobe flash player.

To download a video from a given location (on YouTube press the "Share" button to get the URL to a video). Copy this link and issue clive from a terminal with e.g. the following command:

cclive -s best http://youtu.be/D6z6hn6wZlg

There are plenty of other options to control download behaviour including options to choose the download format that are all nicely documented in the manpage. We can also queue a list of URLs from a file.

(Changed -f to -s; -f is deprecated).

First, if you don't have wget, install it:

sudo apt-get install wget

Use this Perl script:

#!/usr/bin/perl -T



use strict;

use warnings;



#

##  Calomel.org  ,:,  Download YouTube videos and music using wget

##    Script Name : youtube_wget_video.pl

##    Version     : 0.38

##    Valid from  : March 2014

##    URL Page    : https://calomel.org/youtube_wget.html

##    OS Support  : Linux, Mac OSX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD or any system with perl

#                `:`

## Two arguments

##    $1 YouTube URL from the browser

##    $2 Prefix to the file name of the video (optional)

#



############  options  ##########################################



# Option: what file type do you want to download? The string is used to search

# in the YouTube URL so you can choose mp4, webm, avi or flv. mp4 seems to

# work on the most players like Android, iPod, iPad, iPhones, VLC media player

# and MPlayer.

my $fileType = "mp4";



# Option: what visual resolution or quality do you want to download? List

# multiple values just in case the highest quality video is not available, the

# script will look for the next resolution. You can choose "highres" for 4k,

# "hd1080" for 1080p, "hd720" for 720p, "itag=18" which means standard

# definition 640x380 and "itag=17" which is mobile resolution 144p (176x144).

# The script will always prefer to download the highest resolution video format

# from the list if available.

my $resolution = "hd720,itag=18";



# Option: How many times should the script retry the download if wget fails for

# any reason? Do not make this too high as a reoccurring error will just hit

# YouTube over and over again.

my $retryTimes = 5;



# Option: do you want the resolution of the video in the file name? zero(0) is

# no and one(1) is yes. This option simply puts "_hd1080.mp4" or similar at the

# end of the file name.

my $resolutionFilename = 0;



# Option: turn on DEBUG mode. Use this to reverse engineering this code if you are

# making changes or you are building your own YouTube download script.

my $DEBUG=0;



#################################################################



## Initialize retry loop and resolution variables

$ENV{PATH} = "/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin";

my $prefix = "";

my $retry = 1;

my $retryCounter = 0;

my $resFile = "unknown";

my $user_url = "";

my $user_prefix = "";



## Collect the URL from the command line argument

chomp($user_url = $ARGV[0]);

my $url = "$1" if ($user_url =~ m/^([a-zA-Z0-9_-&?=:./]+)$/ or die "nError: Illegal characters in YouTube URLnn" );



## Declare the user defined file name prefix if specified

if (defined($ARGV[1])) {

    chomp($user_prefix = $ARGV[1]);

    $prefix = "$1" if ($user_prefix =~ m/^([a-zA-Z0-9_-. ]+)$/ or die "nError: Illegal characters in filename prefixnn" );

}



## Retry getting the video if the script fails for any reason

while ( $retry != 0 && $retryCounter < $retryTimes ) {



    ## Download the html code from the YouTube page suppling the page title and the

    ## video URL. The page title will be used for the local video file name and the

    ## URL will be sanitized and passed to wget for the download.

    my $html = `wget -4Ncq -e convert-links=off --keep-session-cookies --save-cookies /dev/null --no-check-certificate "$url" -O-`  or die  "nThere was a problem downloading the HTML file.nn";



    ## Format the title of the page to use as the file name

    my ($title) = $html =~ m/<title>(.+)</title>/si;

    $title =~ s/[^wd]+/_/g or die "nError: we could not find the title of the HTML page. Check the URL.nn";

    $title =~ s/_youtube//ig;

    $title =~ s/^_//ig;

    $title = lc ($title);

    $title =~ s/_amp//ig;



    ## Collect the URL of the video from the HTML page

    my ($download) = $html =~ /"url_encoded_fmt_stream_map"(.*)/ig;



    # Print all of the separated strings in the HTML page

    print "n$downloadnn" if ($DEBUG == 1);



    # This is where we look through the HTMl code and select the file type and

    # video quality.

    my @urls = split(',', $download);

    OUTERLOOP:

    foreach my $val (@urls) {

    #   print "n$valnn";



        if ($val =~ /$fileType/) {

            my @res = split(',', $resolution);

            foreach my $ress (@res) {

                if ($val =~ /$ress/) {

                    print "nnGOODnn" if ($DEBUG == 1);

                    print "$valn" if ($DEBUG == 1);

                    $resFile = $ress;

                    $resFile = "sd640" if ( $ress =~ /itag=18/ );

                    $resFile = "mobil176" if ( $ress =~ /itag=17/ );

                    $download = $val;

                    last OUTERLOOP;

                }

            }

        }

    }



    ## Clean up the URL by translating unicode and removing unwanted strings

    $download =~ s/: "//;

    $download =~ s/%3A/:/g;

    $download =~ s/%2F///g;

    $download =~ s/%3F/?/g;

    $download =~ s/%3D/=/g;

    $download =~ s/%252C/%2C/g;

    $download =~ s/%26/&/g;

    $download =~ s/sig=/signature=/g;

    $download =~ s/\u0026/&/g;

    $download =~ s/(type=[^&]+)//g;

    $download =~ s/(fallback_host=[^&]+)//g;

    $download =~ s/(quality=[^&]+)//g;



    ## Clean up the URL

    my ($youtubeurl) = $download =~ /(http?:.+)/;



    ## URL title additon

    my ($titleurl) = $html =~ m/<title>(.+)</title>/si;

    $titleurl =~ s/ - YouTube//ig;

    $titleurl =~ s/ /%20/ig;



    ## Combine the YouTube URL and title string

    $download = "$youtubeurl&title=$titleurl";



    ## A bit more cleanup as YouTube

    $download =~ s/&+/&/g;

    $download =~ s/&itag=d+&signature=/&signature=/g;



    ## Combine file variables into the full file name

    my $filename = "unknown";

    if ($resolutionFilename == 1) {

        $filename = "$prefix$title_$resFile.$fileType";

    }

    else {

        $filename = "$prefix$title.$fileType";

    }



    ## Process check: Are we currently downloading this exact same video? Two of the

    ## same wget processes will overwrite themselves and corrupt the video.

    my $running = `ps auwww | grep [w]get | grep -c "$filename"`;

    print "nNumber of the same wgets running: $runningn" if ($DEBUG == 1);

    if ($running >= 1)

    {

        print "nAlready $running process, exiting." if ($DEBUG == 1);

        exit 0;

    };



    ## Print the long, sanitized YouTube URL for testing and debugging

    print "n$downloadn" if ($DEBUG == 1);



    ## Print the file name of the video collected from the web page title for us to see on the cli

    print "n Download: $filenamenn";



    ## Background the script. Use "ps" if you need to look for the process

    ## running or use "ls -al" to look at the file size and date.

    fork and exit;



    ## Download the video

    system("wget", "-4Ncq", "-e", "convert-links=off", "--load-cookies", "/dev/null", "--tries=10", "--timeout=20", "--no-check-certificate", "$download", "-O", "$filename");



    ## Print the error code of wget

    print "     error code: $?n" if ($DEBUG == 1);



    ## Exit Status: Check if the file exists and we received the correct error code

    ## from system call. If the download experienced any problems the script will run again and try

    ## continue the download till the file is downloaded.



    if ($? == 0 && -e "$filename" && ! -z "$filename")

    {

        print " Finished: $filenamenn" if ($DEBUG == 1);

        $retry = 0;

    }

    else

    {

        print STDERR "n FAILED: $filenamenn" if ($DEBUG == 1);

        $retry = 1;

        $retryCounter++;

        sleep $retryCounter;

    }



} # while



#### EOF #####

Copy this script to a .txt file and rename it youtube_wget.pl.

Make it executable, using the following command:

chmod 755 youtube_wget.pl

When you want to download in the terminal, type:

./youtube_wget.pl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejkm5uGoxs4

Change the YouTube URL to your YouTube video URL.

Save Location: The video will be saved in your current directory.

Source: YouTube Downloader Wget Perl Script

For Firefox users:

As my answer to that question is probably more valid here, I'll present it here for convenience.

You can use flashgot, which is an addon for Firefox that I have found extremely useful for downloading videos from YouTube and other sites. (You still require the flash-plugin in your browser, however, for the video to be detected by flashgot.)

• Install flashgot from the official Mozilla addons site and restart Firefox. Make sure that the addon is enabled; check by going to menu Tools → Addons → Extensions. From the flashgot entry in the extensions tab you can also set a number of preferences.




• Navigate to your YouTube video and set the quality in the YouTube video settings and start the video playing for a few seconds and then pause it.




• Right click in the YouTube page and select flashgot media; there probably will be more than one video; either simply download them both or choose the larger file size (which will be the higher quality video). You can either use your browser's download manager or another program set via the flashgot options.

4kdownloader! Other than downloading videos from URLs, it can also download entire playlists, and also convert them to MP3 or other formats if required.

http://www.4kdownload.com/

I am using it for long time, it's simple and easy to use, and it has a GUI interface for Ubuntu.

UPDATE

The bytubed is no longer maintained. So the new solution is going with the famous, but command-line youtube-dl. It's regularly maintained and runs fine.

1. 
   

   To update it

   
   
   

   youtube-dl -U
   
   

   
   


2. 
   

   And to download a video or playlist

   
   
   

   youtube-dl -c -t URL_HERE
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   And if there is a file with URLs then

   
   
   

   youtube-dl -c -t -a urls.txt
   
   

   
   

Old answer

I know it is answered, but I'm shocked that none explicitly mentioned Bytubed. It's simply the best to me when it comes to YouTube download.
Just do install it and then go to Firefox's menu Tools → Bytubed.

The only downside is it works with Firefox only, but to me it's not a downside since I use Firefox for all my browsing...

I want to suggest a method for downloading YouTube videos using VLC media player in simple four steps:

1. Open the link of the video as network streaming in VLC media player.


2. Select media info and copy the location


3. Paste it in your browser's address bar


4. Save it.

For detail info with screenshots, go here -
http://www.superpctricks.com/2013/12/download-youtube-videos-easily-with-vlc.html

To install youtube-dl:

• 
  

  Recommended way (latest version):

  
  
  
  
  
  1. Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T or searching Terminal in the dash.
  
  
  2. 
     

     Install youtube-dl with this command (you'll be prompted for your password):

     
     
     

     sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl && sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
     
     

     
     
  
  
  
  


• 
  

  Not recommended way (older version):

  
  
  
  
  
  1. Open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T or searching Terminal in the dash.
  
  
  2. 
     

     Install youtube-dl with this command (you'll be prompted for your password):

     
     
     

     sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
     
     

     
     
  
  
  
  

To use youtube-dl:

1. To select where to save the video, you can follow these steps:
   
   
   
   
   • Type cd on the terminal.
   
   
   • Press Space
     
   
   
   • Drag the folder from File Manager and drop it on the terminal.
   
   
   • If you skip this step, the video will be saved on your home folder.
   
   
   
   


2. 
   

   To download the video you can use one of these procedures:

   
   
   

   2.1. Run youtube-dl video_url where video_url is the URL of the video.

   
   
   

   2.2. If do you want to download many videos, you can follow these steps instead of 2.1:

   
   
   
   
   
   • 
     

     Run the below command:

     
     
     

     xargs youtube-dl
     
     

     
     
   
   
   • Repeat the following procedure for each link:
     
     
     
     
     • Paste a link.
     
     
     • Press Enter
       
     
     
     
     
   
   
   • Press Ctrl+D
     
   
   
   
   

   2.3. If do you have a plain text file with a list of links, you can download them this way:

   
   
   
   
   
   • Type cat on the terminal.
   
   
   • Press Space
     
   
   
   • Drag the file form the File Manager and drop it on the terminal.
   
   
   • Press Space
     
   
   
   • Type | xargs youtube-dl
     
   
   
   • Press Enter
     
   
   
   
   



3. Now the video/s will download to the selected folder.

Some final thoughts:

• 
  

  On the method 2.3 the final command should look like this:

  
  
  

  cat '/home/foo/Desktop/myawesomevideos.txt' | xargs youtube-dl
  
  

  
  


• You can also use the URL of a channel and youtube-dl will save the entire channel.


• You can update youtube-dl with sudo youtube-dl -U
  


• You can see all the options of youtube-dl with youtube-dl --help
  

Thanks to user185719 and Michael Grünewald by it's cotributions to this answer.

There is no need for plugins. This is a simple and excellent solution:

http://code.google.com/p/get-flash-videos/

You could also try using Clipgrab. It can download videos from YouTube via the clipboard, or you can search via the application for videos. The PPA is here.

You can use these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:clipgrab-team/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install clipgrab

You can use the Python command line program youtube-dl.

1. 
   

   To install the program youtube-dl, type the following commands in your terminal:

   
   
   

   $ sudo apt-get install python-pip
   
   $ sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl
   
   

   
   


2. 
   

   To download YouTube videos from the terminal, use:

   
   
   

   $youtube-dl <video_url>
   
   

   
   


3. 
   

   To see different quality and formats available use option -F. Then use the format code which will be shown after using option -F, to download it in the desired format.

   
   
   

   $ youtube-dl -F
   $ youtube-dl -f

   
   


4. 
   

   To download the whole playlist use

   
   
   

   $ youtube-dl -citw <playlist_url>
   
   

   
   


5. 
   

   To download the entire channel use

   
   
   

   $ youtube-dl -citw ytuser:<channel_name>
   
   

   
   

You can try ytd-gtk. It's a graphical frontend for youtube-dl and can download from a variety of video sites.

There are so many ways of downloading YouTube videos.

Application:

Personally I have used MiniTube as my application of choice for getting videos from YouTube. It's a real simple approach. Find the video by keyword, then download it.

Command Line:

If you feel comfortable with the command line interface (or CLI as it is known) through your terminal application, try the youtube-dl command line approach.

Websites:

Websites like MediaConvertor or Vixy Freecoder can do this without the need of installing extensions for Firefox or Chrome/Chromium or native applications.

These 2 websites allows you to download in different formats. Both audio and Video formats. You plug in the link to the video on their site and wait for the conversion to complete and then you get the link for the download.

The bonus to the sites is that they are cross-platform much like the extensions approach. But if you want to free your browser from the clutter of extra things, then try the sites or the other suggestions others have mentioned.

Those answers are too complex, so I'm going to help you without installing anything.

First go to your browser and enter this in the URL tab.

Next, enter the YouTube URL in the first box. For example, I'm going to use a Ubuntu YouTube link.

Then press Continue.

Now, once you pressed Continue, this will pop up.

At the Detected Media tab, you can choose the quality of your video.

720p is HD.
480p is HQ.
360p is SQ.
3GP is MV.

Each type of quality takes up memory and downloading time depending on your internet. Just mess around and see what you like.

Now, at the File Name tab, you can change the name of the video when you download it. This is completely optional as you can change the name of it using the rename tab when you right click on it.

Next, you can change the type of video you want. For example, you want it to go on your iPod, you can easily change it to MP3.

I would highly recommend using MP4 as its most commonly used.

Finally, you can now press the Start! button to start the download!

Enjoy! =)

As of now there is the GUI for a popular Youtube-dl available. Where you can manually configure all the settings and just paste & download from link. To install it:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install youtube-dlg

There is this Greasemonkey script on userscripts.org. But I cannot vouch for it. Nor I can assert the security of such a script.

But it seems to work.

You will need to install Greasemonkey.

Solved with a small shell script:

#!/bin/bash

#

# grabflash

#

# Finds any cached Flash videos in the kernel file handles list

# and copies them to the user Videos folder ; this gets around

# the new Flash players habit of opening a cache file in /tmp

# and immediately deleting it.

#

# Usage: Play the video until it's all cached. Run script.

#        The video will be copied to ~/Videos folder as FLV.

#



for I in $(pgrep -f libflashplayer.so)

    do ls -l /proc/$I/fd/* | 

    grep '/tmp/Flash' | 

    grep -o "/proc/$I/fd/\S*" | 

    xargs --no-run-if-empty cp -t ~/Videos/

done

Google Chrome does not support YouTube downloading extensions by default.

But fortunately we can install Google Chrome Extensions manually and that is how you are going to install third-party extensions like SaveForm to Chrome and you would be able to download any video on YouTube (and many other sites) by clicking on Download button, just below the video.

This extension works on Opera Next, Firefox and Safari browsers as well. And they all works like charm on latest Ubuntu operating system.

Source: Video TutsDB

A few more options:

MediaHuman software

• 
  YouTube to mp3 is proprietary but free (as in beer). Works beautifully on Ubuntu and is very easy to use. Available in the Ubuntu Software Center.
  
  


• 
  

  YouTube Downloader is also proprietary but not free. You can grab a free trial version from the homepage. Not available in the USC.

  
  
  

  

  
  


• There's also YouTube to MP3 converter which has the same featureset as YouTube to mp3 but supports a few more websites. This one is also free.

YouTube Center

YouTube Center is an open-source extension for Chrome, Firefox, Opera and other browsers that enhances YouTube with a lot of added features. Among those features is the ability to directly download YouTube videos in a variety of different formats:

I always recommend installing the developer version of the extension as it comes with the latest bug fixes and new features.

For Firefox users:

To download YouTube videos with Firefox, simply visit the following site to download the extension that works with Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-youtube/

Download youtube-dl

wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/2014.08.10/youtube-dl

chmod a+x youtube-dl

Download videos:

./youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPVy_t1_IE

Download specific formats

See the formats:

./youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPVy_t1_IE -F

Download it with -f <val>:

./youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRPVy_t1_IE -f 38

1. Copy the URL of the YouTube video that you're watching


2. Open a new tab and hit www.keepvid.com
   


3. You'll find a text box at the top of the page. Paste the URL that you have copied into the box and click on Download
   


4. Run the Java applet when prompted (you have to have Java installed on the system or else this won't work)


5. Once done, you'll have various formats and qualities of the video, Right click on the one you find most suited and click Save Link As and save it.

I just did this for my Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr).

You should try clipgrab. Other than the fact that you can't
download videos with more than 1080p quality is a nice quick GUI for
YouTube download.

This is the 64 version and the 32 version. Just download and install from Ubuntu Software Center.

Then you straight up download videos. If you want the other
available formats (*.mp3 and more 'someone said it's useful') you are going to need FFmpeg and libavcodec-extra-53.

So run

$ sudo apt-get install libavcodec-extra-53



$ sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

It really comes in-handy.

The one I use is All Video Downloader from here.

And it is the best I know for Linux. Just copy the address of the video and open All Video Downloader, and you will see the URL is already in. After you fix the output format and destination, you just press the Download and ready ;)

There is an wonderful application from SM Team Called SmTube.

You can install SmTube by:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer

sudo apt-get update



sudo apt-get install smtube

Or download from here!!

Search any video (the video you want to download) and then right click on video and click on 'Record Video'.

From setting you can adjust the quality of video and destination of the video to save:

On Linux, you can easily download without these websites which have restrictions, waiting time, and spam. You will be able to download single videos, multiple videos, or even a playlist. As others said, youtube-dl is the solution. You can also select the download media file type.

Check this video for the complete tutorial on installing and using youtube-dlg- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEDNcs23YAQ&t=11s