Introduction
YouTube is the most popular video hosting platform in the world, but it’s often used to host music as well. But using YouTube as a music streaming service is inefficient. It doesn’t support audio-only uploads, so whenever you use YouTube to listen to music, you waste internet traffic on streaming video as well. Though for some people this is not an issue, those with limited data plans should be aware of it. One obvious way to work around this problem is to avoid streaming music entirely, and download all songs you listen to instead. YouTube doesn’t officially support downloading its content, so how do you do this? How do you download a song from YouTube on Mac? Truth be told, it’s not difficult at all; read our article to learn more.
How to download a song from YouTube on Mac
Use a program
Generally speaking, few people want to download just one song from YouTube; it’s much better to download an entire playlist at once. To do this, you will need to install a downloader program.
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.
Other programs
There are other programs that can be used to download a song from YouTube on Mac as well, though they’re generally not as good as SnapDownloader. ClipGrab, for example, is a very simple program that lacks bulk downloading features; although it is free, there’s little reason to use it. Youtube-DL, on the other hand, is a very powerful application that can do everything SnapDownloader does and more. However, it is also extremely difficult to use.
Use a website
There are many websites out there that can be used to download a song from YouTube on Mac. These websites don’t have any advanced features you’d expect from a video downloader program – for one, they cannot download playlists – but they’re free and can be used without installing anything on your computer.
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.
SnapSave
SnapSave is a somewhat inferior website, since it doesn’t provide a shortcut feature like Y2Mate does. Although very convenient, this feature is not really necessary, especially if you just want to download one file.
To use SnapSave, you need to open its website and paste a link to a video into the form as instructed, then press Download. Then, select the resolution (you can also choose to download .mp3 or .ogg for a sound-only option) and click Download again.
Conclusion
It is very easy to download a song from YouTube on Mac. The best option is to use a program like SnapDownloader; these programs provide the ability to download entire playlists or channels at once. But if you want to download just one song, a website like Y2Mate will suffice.