Introduction
Not every music enthusiast wants to keep a local collection these days – many prefer to use subscription services such as Spotify – but those that do have many ways to expand their library. Purchasing DRM-free songs online or on physical media is one such method, but there are other ones as well. For example, one could download music from YouTube. Google doesn’t want you to do that, but it is possible!
Therefore, some people are wondering how to convert YouTube to FLAC on Mac. This question does not accurately reflect what you will actually need to do, however. Since the music is stored on YouTube servers, you’ll need to download it first (which, like we just mentioned, is very much possible). Then – and only then – you will be able to convert that file to FLAC. It’s not possible to download music directly in FLAC either, as YouTube itself doesn’t use this format.
Even though there are two parts to this process, it’s still very easy to do. Simply use the guide below and you’ll be able to “convert YouTube to FLAC” on Mac in no time.
Part 1: Downloading music from YouTube
There are many – probably more than a hundred – programs and websites that allow you to download videos and music from YouTube. No one has the time to figure out which ones are the best, so we’ve done that for you.
SnapDownloader
SnapDownloader is one of the best YouTube downloader programs currently available. It can download entire playlists or channels at once, as well as individual videos. You can download videos in any resolution, or choose to download audio only (very useful when downloading songs). You can also schedule downloads; so if you want to download many songs, you can do it overnight, without impacting your internet speed. It is also capable of bypassing YouTube’s geographic restrictions, so you can download videos not available in your country.
SnapDownloader is a paid application, but it features a free trial. The free version doesn’t have any feature restrictions, but will stop working after 48 hours. This is more than enough time to download many songs from YouTube, especially if you prepare beforehand. And if you plan to do it regularly, purchasing a full version may be a worthwhile investment.
Y2Mate
Y2Mate is a great YouTube downloader website. Notably, it provides the ability to download audio only, which is essential in our case. To use it, open the tab with your video in it and click on the address bar. You will need to replace “youtube” in the link with “youtubepi”. Don’t forget to press Enter afterwards, of course.
Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHMYFlh9DeE -> https://www.youtubepi.com/watch?v=sHMYFlh9DeE
Of course, you can also simply visit its website and download music this way.
Part 2: Converting music to FLAC
Unfortunately, neither SnapDownloader nor Y2Mate can download music from YouTube directly in FLAC. Other programs and websites can’t either; if you were paying attention while reading, you should already know that it’s not possible to do that, at all. Therefore you will need to use a separate converter program to perform this step. However, you should also consider whether this is truly necessary. After all, performing such a conversion will not increase the audio quality.
MediaHuman Audio Converter
MediaHuman Audio Converter is a free converter program for Windows and Mac. You can use it to convert music files to FLAC; it supports many audio formats, including MP3 and OGG Vorbis. What’s more, MediaHuman can be used to convert many audio files at once, which is invaluable in certain cases. Other neat features include the ability to export music to iTunes and to convert video files to audio. So if you accidentally downloaded a YouTube video in the previous step, you can easily fix this problem.
Download MediaHuman Audio Converter here.
CloudConvert
CloudConvert is a converter website that supports many formats; it is not limited to music either. However, it has a lot of settings specifically for audio files. You can trim the files, adjust their volume, bitrate and sample rate, and even convert the file to mono if you so choose. All of these options are available for FLAC files, so this website is very useful indeed. Of course, you don’t need to adjust any of these settings; they are only there for advanced users.
If this sounds interesting to you, click on this link to go to CloudConvert website.
Summary
It’s not possible to directly convert YouTube to FLAC on Mac. You need to download the music file from YouTube first; SnapDownloader is an excellent program well-suited for this task. Then, you will need to convert the downloaded file to FLAC, which can be done with MediaHuman Audio Converter or a different program.
It should be noted, however, that converting MP3 or OGG (audio formats used by YouTube) to FLAC will not improve sound quality, so it’s not really necessary in most circumstances. This means that you can skip the second step and don’t bother converting the music file at all.