download a youtube video, or just its audio
paste the link, pick video or audio and get the file. there's nothing to install and no queue.
how it works
- paste the link into the box on the tool.
- pick video or audio, and a quality if you don't want the default.
- grab resolves the link and the file arrives.
usually that last step is just a direct link to the platform's cdn. the data never touches the grab server. some sites won't serve a client they don't recognize and those get tunneled through the server and then back out. no writes to disk happen. youtube and some others hand over the video and the audio separately but your browser stitches those back together via ffmpeg compiled to webassembly.
quality walks down a ladder: 1080p, then 720p, 480p, 360p, 240p if the higher ones are not there. audio mode gives you mp3.
what you get
- video: an mp4 at the highest rung the source has. youtube often sends the video and the audio separately but your browser merges them before you get the file.
- audio only: an mp3, which is good for a lecture, a set, or a podcast that got published as video.
- the title becomes the filename, and there's a shorter naming style in settings if you want one.
this wants a link to one video. paste a playlist url and you get the single item it points at instead of the whole list.
if the format is wrong
there's a remux tab that runs ffmpeg inside your browser so the file stays on your machine. it converts between mp4, webm, mp3, ogg, opus, wav, m4a.
"auto" rewrites the container and copies the codec across untouched. converting to mp3 or wav re-encodes instead and you lose a little each time.
what doesn't work
some sites don't work at all:
- reddit and bilibili block the vpn exit grab downloads through, so they stay off until that gets fixed.
- twitch and vimeo are broken upstream in the extractor grab falls back on and there's nothing to fix on this end.
- anything behind a login is out. grab has no account anywhere and it won't pretend to be you.
- drm-protected streams can't be downloaded and that isn't going to change.
what grab keeps
you don't need an account to download anything.
nothing you fetch gets written to disk on the server. direct downloads never touch it and tunneled ones just pass through and get dropped. grab doesn't keep a history of what you downloaded and it doesn't run analytics. nothing about you is sold to anyone.
the full privacy policy and terms are in the about tab.
questions
is there a length limit?
there's no hard cap written down anywhere but grab runs on one modest box and the fetch has to finish inside a request. a several-hour upload at 1080p is the one that times out. drop it to 720p and it usually gets through.
can i get 4k?
no, the ladder stops at 1080p. storage and bandwidth on a self-funded box cost real money.
do i need an account?
no, downloading needs nothing at all. the account is for the paid tier, which pays for the server.
is this legal?
it depends what you're downloading. your own uploads, creative-commons material or a personal copy where local law allows it are fine in most places. redistributing someone else's work isn't and no tool changes that.