Download YouTube Videos Using Safari
You’ve possibly spent several minutes, hours or days scouring the Internet for some fancy freeware application that will help you download that favourite YouTube clip that you want to keep forever in your archives.
However, what most people don’t know is that the ability to download that favourite YouTube clip is available right there in front of them. Within the same Safari (we assume) that you’re using to read this!
And,… the good news? Its also free.
Once the YouTube clip is downloaded it can be played back either using VLC or Quicktime provided a Perian plug-in has been installed.
Here is the simple step-by-step instructions:
- Surf to the YouTube clip of your choice
- Press CTRL + Option + A to bring up Safari’s Activity window then run down the list of activities being churned out and look for the activity which is generating the highest download bandwidth, usually 0.5MB of more
- Double-click on that activity and Safari will open a Download window and begin to download the file instantly
The eventual file downloaded may or may not be formatted with a file extension. For example in our case, the file that was eventually created from the download was named “videoplayback” without an extension.
What is left to be done is simply to rename the file with a flash file format extension “.flv”), so the end result is “videoplayback.flv”.
Once that’s done you can easily play the file back on VLC or Quicktime with the Perian plug-in installed.
