You can download videos on the browser as easily as on mobile
YouTube is testing this feature on its Premium users, and since it’s still in the testing phase, it won’t be enabled automatically. If you want to use it, you’ll have to enable it from the YouTube New Page. From that point, you will be able to download videos for offline playback. If you see a video that you want to download, you’ll be able to do so by pressing the Download button directly under the video.
There are some differences between downloading via the app and the browser
Downloading on the browser and downloading on the app are easy to do, but there are a few differences. Firstly, if you want to download the video properly, you will need to keep that window open. It’s not like on mobile where you can close the program and have it download in the background. Also, when you download videos using the app, you are prompted to choose the resolution before downloading the video. However, you will need to go to the download setting and change the resolution that the videos will download. This could be a bit of an annoyance because if you need to download videos at different resolutions, you will have to go back and forth between the settings and the video feed. Hopefully, YouTube changes this and has the user select the resolution with each video.
YouTube is only testing this feature until October 19th
If people thoroughly enjoy this feature, they will be sad to know that it’s only being tested until October 19th. YouTube is in the phase of gathering user feedback to see if it’s worth keeping around. It’s true that more people watch YouTube using their phones than on their computers. This means that there might not be a lot of people downloading videos to their computers. Only time will tell if enough people will actually use this feature. YouTube is one of the companies that test a lot of things. YouTube TV is an example. If this is a feature that you want to use, you can try it out, but you have to remember that this is only for YouTube Premium users.
