↓ yoinkvideo

Yoink any YouTube video, the clean way.

Paste a link. Pick a quality. Trim if you want. That's it.

Tip: paste a YouTube link (or just the 11-character video id) and hit Continue.

How it works

Three steps. No accounts. No app to install.

  1. 1

    Paste a link

    Any YouTube URL — full link, shortened youtu.be, mobile m.youtube.com, or just the 11-character video id.

  2. 2

    Pick a quality

    1080p MP4 by default, with audio-only and MP3 one click away. Want a clip? Drag the trim handles on the timeline.

  3. 3

    Download

    The file streams straight to your browser. No redirect to a sketchy mirror. No ads. The file is what it says it is.

Why this exists

Every other YouTube downloader we tried had the same problems: three popups before the real download button, a fake "download" link that opens an ad, a forced redirect, a captcha for no reason, or a quality picker that doesn't actually pick what you asked for.

yoinkvideo is the tool we wanted to use. The homepage you're looking at is the entire app — paste, pick, save. No upsells, no tracker pixels, no "buy the premium version" splash. Everything important is in the open: the architecture, the privacy stance, the limitations. We document them so you can decide for yourself whether to trust it.

The short version on privacy

  • ✓ No accounts. You never sign in. We never see your YouTube identity.
  • ✓ No logs of what you download. Web-server access logs are off. We don't write your URL or video id anywhere.
  • ✓ Nothing persists on our disk. Pre-download buffers live in memory (tmpfs), get cleared immediately after each job, and never touch the disk.
  • ✓ No third-party trackers. No Google Analytics, no ad scripts, no Facebook pixel. The page you're on right now ships ~13 KB of our own JavaScript and nothing else.

Full details on /privacy and the architecture on /transparency.

Frequently asked

Is downloading YouTube videos legal?
Depends where you live and what you do with the file. For personal, offline viewing of videos you have a right to access (your own uploads, Creative Commons content, public-domain works), most jurisdictions treat it as personal use. Distribution, re-uploading, or commercial use without permission is not. YouTube's Terms of Service ask you to use their official download feature; this site exists because that feature doesn't cover every legitimate need. Use your own judgement.
Do you log what I download?
No. We don't record video IDs, URLs, titles, or any identifier of what flowed through the system. The container is read-only, /tmp is in-memory and wiped continuously, and the web server runs with access logs disabled. The only IP-level data we touch is short-lived rate-limit counters at the edge (per-IP request counts that auto-expire within the hour).
Why is there a short wait after I click a quality?
For combined formats (1080p MP4 and above, MP3, trimmed clips), our backend has to fetch the video and audio streams from YouTube and merge them before sending you the file. We pre-download into a memory-only filesystem first, then stream the result. That takes a few seconds; the button stays disabled while it works so you don't accidentally trigger a duplicate job.
Why does the MP3 download take longer than the video?
Single-stream downloads (audio-only M4A, original combined MP4) stream directly. MP3 means re-encoding from YouTube's source format (typically Opus or AAC) to MP3 — that's CPU work, not network. For a 4-minute song it's around 20-30 seconds; for an hour-long audiobook it's a few minutes. If you don't need MP3 specifically, the 'Audio (M4A)' preset is much faster.
How is this different from YouTube Premium?
YouTube Premium downloads work only inside YouTube's apps, expire after 30 days offline, and don't give you the file. We give you the actual file, in the format you picked, that you own. No subscription, no expiration. Premium pays YouTube and creators; we don't.
What formats can I download?
Every format YouTube serves: progressive MP4 (up to 720p), DASH MP4 video (up to whatever resolution the video has — 1080p, 1440p, 4K, sometimes 8K), VP9 WebM, M4A and Opus audio. We mux video + audio into MP4 for the standard presets. MP3 and Opus audio are also available via on-the-fly transcoding.
Can I download just a section of the video?
Yes. Click 'Trim portion of video' after pasting the URL. Drag the handles on the timeline or type the start/end times. The download will be only that section. Frame-accurate trimming is optional via the 'Precise' toggle (slower because it re-encodes).
Does this work on mobile?
Yes, on any modern browser. The download will land in your phone's Downloads folder. iOS Safari sometimes asks where to save large files; that's a Safari behavior, not ours.
Are there usage limits?
Per-IP rate limits are in place to keep the service stable for everyone: roughly 60 metadata lookups per hour, 60 downloads per hour, and 5 trim/MP3 jobs per minute. Normal use stays well under these. If you hit a limit, you'll see a clear error; wait a few minutes and try again.
Why does this work when most YouTube downloaders break?
YouTube actively makes downloading harder — bot-detection on datacenter IPs, signed URLs that expire in minutes, periodic API changes. We use the open-source yt-dlp library (which patches around YouTube changes within hours) routed through Cloudflare WARP so YouTube sees consumer-grade traffic rather than a datacenter IP. The setup is documented in detail on the Transparency page.
Can I download age-restricted, members-only, or private videos?
No. Age-restricted public videos sometimes work, but member-only and private videos require signing in — which we don't do (we never see your YouTube account). If a video shows 'Sign in to confirm' on YouTube itself, we can't extract it either.
Will the downloaded file work everywhere?
MP4 plays in every modern player, browser, phone, smart TV, and editor. WebM and Opus are slightly less universal but supported by VLC, modern browsers, and most software. MP3 is the most universally compatible audio format — pick that for older devices.