How to download ANY video or audio from YouTube without installing extra software

It's been more than 15 years since Jawed uploaded his «Me at the zoo»To what is today the most popular video platform on the planet. When we have an internet connection, there is no doubt that it is best to visit the service from a web browser, but sometimes we want to see the content off-line. On the other hand, there are videos that cannot be downloaded because their author does not allow it from the settings, but in this article we are going to show you how to download any video or audio from YouTube, and all from a browser like Firefox.

Before continuing I would like to make something clear: what is explained here is only valid for those who just want to use a web browser desktop to download any YouTube video. In addition, it is likely that downloading some videos is something illegal, or at least illegal, so everyone should be responsible for their actions if they decide to follow what is explained in this tutorial. On the other hand, the process is not the shortest: we have to download video and audio separately and then put it all together, something that can also be done from the browser.

Download any YouTube video with just the browser

If you are wondering why I decided to share this tutorial, it is partly because, as I have explained, there are videos that cannot be downloaded with services such as tube ninja. In addition, the method explained here will allow us download the videos in their highest quality, or at least one superior to the one that offers services like the one mentioned above. Here are the steps to follow if you want to download any YouTube video.

1. We open any web browser that has inspection tools or an inspector.
2. We open the YouTube video.
3. We right click and open the inspector. In Firefox it is "Inspect Element". In Chrome it is "Inspect".
4. Among the tabs, we choose "Network" or "Network".
5. In Firefox, we click on "Media" to filter the video and audio. If we use Chrome, we can choose the XHR tab.
6. In both cases, we are interested in what "videoplayback" says. We have to download the video and audio separately. To do this, we select one of the options and, on the right, we choose "Headers" or "Headers", where all the information will appear, including whether it is video or audio.

7. With the right click on what is marked in blue in the capture, we copy the URL.
8. We paste the URL in a new browser window and delete the end, from where it says "& range = xxxxxxxxx" (the quotes are not there).
9. We press Enter, which will open the video or audio in a format that can be downloaded.
10. We right click on the playback window and save the video or audio, depending on what it is showing. It is worth it that in both cases we put the extension .mp4, although in the audio we can put .mp3 and the editors should recognize it. If it fails, we can download them directly as .webm.

Related article:

How to download YouTube video and audio on Linux

Merging video and audio

11. Now that we have the video and audio on our PC, we have to join them. There are many ways to do it, but since we have promised for this article that we will not need extra software, we are going to link it with the browser. To do this, we go to the page kapwing.com.
12. We click on «Start editing».

13. We click on "Click to upload" and choose the video.

14. Next, we click on Audio. A new editor will open for us.

15. We click on «Click to upload audio» and choose the audio. Video and audio are supposed to be perfectly in sync, so we could move on to the next step.

16. We click on «Done». Returns us to the original editor.

17. We click on "Publish" and wait for the process to finish. It takes a while.

18. Once it finishes working, we right click on the video and choose "Save video as", we give it a name, we choose the path and we download it. We can also click on «Download», but it is supposed to put a watermark that can be removed if we log into the service, for which we would first have to register. I have tried several times and this watermark has not appeared.

Join video and audio with VLC

If we do not want to join the video and audio with the browser, since the previous website may stop working at any time, we can also join them with VLC. Taking into account that it is installed by default in many Linux distributions or that we install it on our own, that of "without installing extra software" would continue to be fulfilled. To do so, we will do the following:

1. We open VLC.
2. Let's go to Medium / Convert.
3. We click on «Add» or «Add».
4. We choose the video.
5. We click on "Show more options", or "show more options" if it appears in our language.
6. We mark the box «Play another media synchronously».

7. When you check the box, the "Explore" option appears. We click on it.
8. We go back to «Add» or «Add, we choose the audio file and confirm by clicking on« Select ».
9. We click on «Convert / Save».
10. We choose a profile.
11. We indicate a name and route.
12. Finally, we click on "Start" and wait for the process to finish.

With everything explained in this article, surely there is no YouTube video that can resist you, and this also includes the best quality.