YouTube, the most popular video platform to ever exist, have recently faced competition from mobile applications such as TikTok. These applications managed to carve out their own niche in the video hosting market by focusing on extremely short videos, ranging from several seconds to several minutes. These videos are popular with mobile users, who can’t always commit enough time to watch a YouTube video.
YouTube Shorts is YouTube’s own attempt to provide this type of short, mobile-oriented content and win these users back. It is a relatively new addition to the platform, having launched in summer of 2021. But YouTube users have already posted some shorts that are interesting, fun, and generally worth saving to your own computer.
So how do you download YouTube shorts on Mac? Is such a thing even possible? Luckily for you, it is! It is actually very easy to download YouTube shorts. The guide below will explain how to do it.
Download YouTube shorts on Mac using websites
There are many websites of the internet that allow one to download shorts from YouTube. It is a great option because you don’t need to install anything on your Mac, saving you the hassle. These websites can also be used to download regular videos from YouTube, although this is outside the scope of this article.
Savefrom
Savefrom, also known as Savefrom.net, is a website for downloading videos from YouTube. It supports downloading both normal YouTube videos and YouTube shorts, and can also be used to download videos from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, and many other websites. For the purposes of this article, however, it literally doesn’t matter how many platforms it can download from; we only care about YouTube. No, we placed it on top of the list because there is a neat shortcut you can use.
While you can go to their website and download any video from there, there is an easier way. Simply open the video that you want to download on YouTube and click on the address bar. Then, replace “www.” with “ss” and press Enter.
Example:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xcv7hd2_OfY -> https://ssyoutube.com/shorts/xcv7hd2_OfY
This will open Savefrom page for your video right away, allowing you to download it. This is great for infrequent users, because you don’t even need to memorize the website’s name or add a bookmark. Just remember this shortcut: “ss” stands for “save”. One-time users don’t benefit from this much, but this feature still puts this website on the top of our list.
Y2Mate
Y2Mate is another great YouTube downloader website. In some ways it is even better than Savefrom. You can download videos in more resolutions, and it also provides the ability to download audio only, a feature missing from Savefrom. However, it is not as good as Savefrom for downloading YouTube shorts. Although it has a shortcut feature, just like Savefrom, the feature is not compatible with YouTube Shorts. Instead, you will have to visit its website and download them this way.
SnapSave
SnapSave is a somewhat inferior option. Still, it is worth listing as an alternative, in case the former two websites are not available for you or if you’ve ran into some restrictions using them. Don’t think it’s terribly bad, though; all it’s really missing is the shortcut feature. Although very convenient, it is not necessary, and it can even be argued that it’s better than Savefrom because it offers more resolutions.
This means that to use SnapSave, you need to go to its website and paste the link there 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.
YTB.rip
YTB.rip is easily the worst of the four websites we’ve listed. Do not use it unless you cannot access any of the websites above. It is only listed here as a last-resort option. It still does the job, but it doesn’t offer many resolutions and doesn’t have a shortcut feature either. It does let you download audio, but not in .mp3, so you might have to convert it later.
Here’s the link to its website. Even though it is very limited, it’s still an option.
Conclusion
There are many ways to download YouTube shorts on Mac, but using a website is the easiest and the most convenient option. Out of these websites, we believe that Savefrom is the best option, thanks to the shortcut it provides. But you can use other websites as well; after all, some of them provide features that Savefrom doesn’t.
You should also note that downloading videos – or shorts – from YouTube doesn’t have to be limited to a single video. Certain tools will allow you to automatically download entire playlists; read this guide to learn more.
Our website also features many guides that aren’t focused on YouTube, but can nonetheless help you get more value out of your Mac. For example, installing BlueStacks on Mac will allow you to play Android games and install Android software. Or, if this doesn’t sound too useful, you can install Windows 10 on Mac instead, to run Windows games and software.
