Download youtube videos from Safari browser in Mac OS X

How to download youtube videos from Safari browser in Mac OS X

Submitted by Chetan on Tuesday, 14 October 200814 Comments

This is probably the easiest way to download a video from most of the video viewing websites like Youtube and others. And this is for Safari browser, as no other browser in Mac has the activity window which exposes everything that is being done at that moment in the browser, even the loading of a video in the website. And that’s what we need to get the video downloaded.

Safari browser has no add-ons like Firefox which easily helps in directly and easily downloading the videos from Youtube. But many might not be knowing that there is a better and easier way to download the youtube videos, with its own activity window. Just while the video is running, pause it and follow the steps which am explaining below -

Open Safari browser, and a particular video in youtube.
Then pause the video, and go to the Window menu, and click on “Activity”
safari activity select

The activity window opens and shows what currently is running in Safari, the tabs info etc.
In that, you would also see the youtube video link with a list of files under it. Select the highest size file in it, as the one i highlighted in the image below.
safari activity video

Double click on it and the download would start and the video would download in sometime in .flv version.
safari video download

Isn’t it the easiest way to download from Safari?

14 Comments »

Varun said:

This is the easiest way to download a video, without having a need to go to another site and using it to download the video, chetan search for such a shortcut in Mozilla FF.

Reply to this comment:

- 14 October 2008 at 1:55 pm

Amar said:

Hey i know one thing through which you can download videos in XP ( this is for the people who dont have mac )

You need to install the latest real player and then you will have an option to download directly from the site..

This includes youtube and many sites

Reply to this comment:

- 15 October 2008 at 2:10 pm

Downloadic said:

Thanks; by the way, downloading .flv is the easier way. Converting is a little bit hard. But http://www.keepvid.com ?f you go there, you can download the .mp4 version…

Reply to this comment:

- 18 October 2008 at 10:43 am

Ann said:

Hey it works!! great! I will download lots of them…..

http://www.safaribrowserwindows.com

Reply to this comment:

- 21 October 2008 at 4:49 am

Sherry said:

@Ann good to know it works

Reply to this comment:

- 22 October 2008 at 4:04 am

Amar said:

@downloadic

Thanks for posting the site’s link

M gonna give it a try

Reply to this comment:

- 22 October 2008 at 10:53 pm

brave said:

i used to this simple free video downloader for mac tool, recommended:
http://www.moviesmac.com/mac-free-video-downloader/index.html#118

Reply to this comment:

- 24 October 2008 at 2:34 am

Varun said:

@Amar thanks for sharing man, will try it out.

Reply to this comment:

- 29 October 2008 at 2:20 pm

Seb said:

I download de .flv file… download Perian in order to play it in quicktime.
got audio but not image…….help

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- 8 November 2008 at 8:46 pm

easy way to capture youtube video through safari « JC’s Blog-O-Gibberish said:

[...] easy way to capture youtube video through safari Posted on November 14, 2008 by johnacook Download youtube videos from Safari browser in Mac OS X | Apple [...]

Reply to this comment:

- 14 November 2008 at 9:56 pm

sluna said:

Yes, I also like to download youtube videos, then convert them to my ipod, I tried many tools, now the one I am using is :
Mac YouTube Downloader and converter “
I just downloaded it yesterday.

Reply to this comment:

- 21 November 2008 at 5:47 am

Adam said:

It’s simple - go to MetaTuber.com (I’ve discovered this iste few days ago) and download any YouTube video

Reply to this comment:

- 24 November 2008 at 5:30 pm

Rafael said:

hey after the video is downloaded in flv. version…….what should i do

Reply to this comment:

- 26 November 2008 at 1:48 am

maccolar said:

Nice guide, I know this mac youtube downloader is a nice alternative, it can help you download and convert youtube video on Mac, it works pretty well for me.
http://www.mac-dvd.com/mac-youtube-downloader.html

Reply to this comment:

- 4 December 2008 at 9:19 am