Can you always download videos from any site?

Tech Support Forum
1

What I’m asking is: is there always a way to download a video from any website if you know what you’re doing?

Or are there some videos that are so locked in that there’s no way to get them, no matter what you try?

I’m asking because I’m struggling to download an embedded video from a website. It doesn’t have its own URL, and I’ve tried various methods, but nothing seems to work.

When I check the Network tab on Chrome’s Dev Tools, it looks like the video is under an “xhr” type, but I can’t figure out how to grab it from there.

Any advice?

2

Raj said:
If you’re comfortable with the command line, youtube-dl is a good choice. It can grab embedded videos from most sites.

https://youtube-dl.org/

YouTube-DL is great, but yt-dlp is a better version.

3

@Storm
Just to elaborate: yt-dl hasn’t been updated since late 2021, and some sites (like YouTube) have added protections that cause yt-dl to download really slowly. yt-dlp is a continuation of the same project, just by a different group, and it’s updated regularly to bypass these issues.

4

@Storm
Youtube-DLG is also a good option.

5

Raj said:
If you’re comfortable with the command line, youtube-dl is a good choice. It can grab embedded videos from most sites.

https://youtube-dl.org/

For those who aren’t comfortable with command line tools, there’s a GUI version as well: https://github.com/jely2002/youtube-dl-gui (I haven’t tested this one, but it’s worth a try).

6

@Weston
Another option: media-downloader. This one can also use wget in addition to yt-dlp.

7

Jem said:
@Weston
Another option: media-downloader. This one can also use wget in addition to yt-dlp.

I’m on Android, got termux, ran the command… but now what? I’m lost.

8

@Rin
Good question. I’m not sure, either.

9

Kai said:
@Rin
Good question. I’m not sure, either.

Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing.

10

Rin said:

Kai said:
@Rin
Good question. I’m not sure, either.

Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing.

I’ll try to see if I can make this work and let you know.

11

@Qi
Honestly, I forgot what I was even trying to do here.

12

@Qi
But hey, try JDownloader2. It can grab almost any file from a link.

13

Rin said:

Kai said:
@Rin
Good question. I’m not sure, either.

Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing.

This post was cleared up and anonymized with Redact.

14

Raj said:
If you’re comfortable with the command line, youtube-dl is a good choice. It can grab embedded videos from most sites.

https://youtube-dl.org/

I tried to visit the link, but it says it’s blocked due to a court ruling in Hamburg.

15

Raj said:
If you’re comfortable with the command line, youtube-dl is a good choice. It can grab embedded videos from most sites.

https://youtube-dl.org/

I got a message saying the link is blocked and something in German, but I’m not even in Germany!

16

Try Internet Download Manager (IDM). It adds a browser extension that shows a download popup over any video on the page.

17

Ellis said:
Try Internet Download Manager (IDM). It adds a browser extension that shows a download popup over any video on the page.

Thank you, this program just saved me! Found this comment a year later and had to tell you how much I appreciate it.

18

Ellis said:
Try Internet Download Manager (IDM). It adds a browser extension that shows a download popup over any video on the page.

Thanks for this. Now I can download videos from a news site I subscribe to.

19

Ellis said:
Try Internet Download Manager (IDM). It adds a browser extension that shows a download popup over any video on the page.

Does this work on Mac? I can’t open the .exe file.

20

@Ellis
Unfortunately, IDM is only for Windows.