Downie is video downloader for YouTube & many other video sites that works only on Mac operating system, and it requires macOS 10.11+, including Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, EI Capitan. Like many other competitors, Downie supports many video hosting sites, including YouTube, Youku, Bilibili, Vimeo & SoundCloud etc., and the number is rapidly. May 12, 2020 Second, download a free application in the App Store to convert YouTube video to MP4. You can select the reputable app - The Video Converter to convert video files to MP4, AVI, MKV, MPEG, etc. Final Verdict. This post covers the most comprehensive solutions to convert YouTube video to MP4 for different operating platforms.
If you’ve never heard of the MKV file format, you’re not alone. It’s a newer standard than familiar file types like MOV or the more standard MP4 format. But there’s good reason it’s been popping up, and now is a great time to learn about converting MKV to MP4.
MKV is gaining traction because it can support an endless number of videos, audio files, pictures, or subtitled tracks in one file. It’s also open-standard, and free. The term MKV is acronymous for “Matroska,” commonly known as Russian nesting dolls. (See, all kinds of files nesting into one larger file!)
This ability to wrap all types of media into one file type is what makes MKV so popular. But it’s only available to a limited number of devices, and most often used as a video file-type rather than for true multimedia files. Because it’s open-standard, there’s no advantage for large tech firms like Apple to support MKV, or adopt it onto their platforms.
In fact, there’s no native support for MKV within macOS. If you were sent an MKV file, you would quickly have to convert the MKV to MP4. In this article, we’ll talk you through how the conversion works using several different MKV to MP4 converter apps.
MKV to MP4 without losing quality
Remember when we said MKV files were still not terribly popular? Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about that. There will still be plenty of times you’ll need an MKV converter for your Mac, especially if you’re going to share your files with anyone. Chances are they will find the MP4 format much easier.
For this use-case, we recommend Permute converter. It’s an app focused on converting just about any and all file types to – well, just about anything! It’s really simple to use, too. Here’s how to convert MKV to MP4 using Permute:
Open Permute.
From the menu bar, go to File > Open.
Select the MKV file on your Mac you’d like to convert.
Select ‘Open.’
From the ‘Video’ dropdown menu, select ‘MP4.’
Click the ‘play’ button in the sub-window housing your MKV file. Keep in mind the video itself has a play button, too; the play button on the sub-window is what starts the conversion.
That's it! Your MKV file will convert to the MP4 format. Keep a few things in mind before you start a transfer, though. In the upper-right corner of the sub-window, you’ll see a gear icon. This is where you can control where your converted file is placed. You can also make other changes like rotating the video, should you need that functionality.
Permute is also adept at batch conversion of files. If you had a few MKV videos you wanted to convert to the MP4 format, you don’t need to go one-by-one. You could choose multiple videos in step three above, if they were all in the same location on your Mac. If the videos were in different places (one may be in downloads, the other in ‘documents,’ another in a folder – you get it) you could simply repeat steps two, three, and four until all your videos were added.
The ‘sub-window’ in Permute holds files to be converted, so adding multiple videos will convert them all the same way. Keep that in mind before you start; if you didn’t want all your videos to be MP4s, you’d have to create new groups.
That’s pretty simple, though. On the bottom left of the video is a gear icon, where you’ll see an option to ‘create new group.’ Simply do that and you’ll find the video in its own sub-window, ready for conversion to a different format.
How to play MKV on Mac
Because MKV isn’t natively supported, you shouldn’t expect your Mac to spin up QuickTime to play downloaded files as it does with so many other media file types. Instead, we have two great options for MKV playback: Elmedia Player, and Movist Pro.
Elmedia Player is exceptionally strong at playing just about any file type you can throw at it. The app uses hardware accelerated decoding to play files, which ensures your MKV playback will be strong. Elmedia player also supports MP3, MP4, SWF, FLV, AVI, MOV, and DAT file types.
Here’s how you can play any MKV file using Elmedia Player:
Open Elmedia Player.
From the menu bar, go to File > Open.
Select the MKV file on your Mac you’d like to play.
Select 'Open.'
And that’s it! Your MKV file will automatically play in Elmedia Player. In the Elmedia Player window, you’ll be able to pause and play your file, fast forward or rewind, and choose the volume level. On the bottom right of the screen you’ll see a gear icon, where you’re able to finesse the playback speed, manage audio and subtitle delays, control the brightness, saturation, contrast, gamma, and hue of your video, and enjoy a full equalizer for your MKV video files.
Movist Pro is just as impressive when it comes to video playback. Here’s how to play an MKV video on Movist Pro:
Open Movist Pro.
From the menu bar, select File > Open File.[MKV3]
Select the MKV file on your Mac that you’d like to play.
Select ‘Open.’
Deja vu, eh?! It’s the same process as Elmedia Player, which is great. Movist Pro has a lot of really great things going for it, too.
It has a really minimalist interface, with controls that quickly dive out of the way when a video is being played. The scroll-bar is as far to the bottom as possible, and the ‘play’ button is all the way on the bottom left. Even with controls on-screen, you end up seeing more of the video than with most other players.
Movist also supports the Mac’s native picture-in-picture mode, which pins a video to the bottom-right side of your screen. It’s a great way to keep track of videos while doing other things.
If you’re just looking to play a particular section of a file, Movist Pro has a really neat feature that lets you choose a range within a file, and loop the playback for that range. You can also add bookmarks to any video; an excellent option if you want to keep tabs on a video lecture, or mark favorite parts of a movie.
When you need to convert MKV to MP4, there’s nothing better than a simple, effective converter. For our liking, Permute is the way to go. It’s simple, effective, and doesn’t create any issues with the converted files. Too often we’ve seen converters which degrade the quality of a video.
Playback is also a critical component. While Permute can convert with ease, you may not always need that feature. Besides, you’ll want to watch your converted video files, too!
Elmedia Player and Movist Pro are both excellent video player apps. In our testing, each performed spectacularly. We also viewed converted files on Elmedia Player and Movist Pro to ensure there were no issues on conversion or playback. All three apps worked perfectly.
And all three – Elmedia Player, Movist Pro, and Permute – are available for free as part of a 7-day trial of Setapp, the world’s best suite of productivity apps for your Mac. Setapp also affords you free access to dozens more of the best Mac apps, which span all kinds of use-cases.
When your free trial period is over, Setapp is only $9.99 per month. If you pay for a full year in advance, it brings the total down to $8.99 per month, a 10 percent discount! Families will enjoy Setapp’s $19.99 per month plan, which provides unlimited access to the full setapp catalog on up to four different Macs.
It’s an incredible deal. Give Setapp a try today!
If you are a Windows user, choosing a YouTube video downloader is easy, but it is a different story for Mac users. And therefore, we will present 15 best YouTube video downloader for Mac that are compatible with all Mac platforms, such as Catalina, Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, EI Capitan & Yosemite etc., and there are more than 15 of them in the market.
Here is the list of 15 best YouTube video downloaderthat work on all Mac platforms in 2020.
1. Gihosoft TubeGet for Mac
2. MacX YouTube Downloader
3. Airy
4. ClipGrab
5. MediaHuman YouTube Downloader
6. 5KPlayer
7. Apowersoft
8. Wondershare AllMyTube
9. iTube Studio for Mac
10. Total Video Downloader
11. YTD
12. Downie
13. SConverter.com
14. Softorino YouTube Converter 2
15. 4K Video Downloader for Mac
1. Gihosoft TubeGet for Mac
If you are looking the best way to download YouTube videos on a MacBook, then you can resort to Gihosoft TubeGet, a YouTube video downloader for Mac & Windows. It allows users to download multiple videos or a whole playlist from YouTube at once even if the clips are lengthy. The tool has no trouble saving HD & UHD quality videos and it doesn’t hog much system resources.
Gihosoft TubeGet also offers the capability to download 48/60fps videos from YouTube, which is a boon for the game and sports lover. Well, to the language learner, Gihosoft TubeGet develops the feature to grab the closed caption, local subtitle, auto-generated subtitle & auto-translated subtitle are all supported.
2. MacX YouTube Downloader
If you are a Mac user, no matter MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, Mac mini, no matter Mac OS X, OS X, macOS 10.12, 10.13, 10.14, 10.15, and have a strong desire to download YouTube videos, MacX YouTube downloader for Mac is a nice choice. MacX helps to save videos from Facebook, Dailymotion, Vevo, Vimeo and multiple popular video hosting websites.
MacX YouTube downloader free full version supports to download YouTube videos in whatever resolution that YouTube provides, such as 720P, 1080P, 2K, 4K & 8K etc., and keep them in MP4 or WebM format. Integrated with an easy-to-use interface and advanced technology, MacX YouTube Downloader makes it the ultimate choice for you to download popular videos & musics at a fast speed with minimal quality loss.
3. Airy
Unlike other video downloader that listed in this article, Airy only works with YouTube, perhaps the developers know that concentration is the key to success. Airy offers the feature to download full HD 1080P, 4K & 8K Ultra HD videos from YouTube conveniently. You also get options on video formats, e.g. MP4, WebM, FLV, OGG & 3GP etc.. If you want to save soundtracks in MP3 format, and not keep the whole music video, Airy can perfectly finish this work, and it can even download the album art for you.
Airy also has the capability to save the entire playlist or channel from YouTube. Another big advantage about Airy is that it even lets you pause a download, and resume download the YouTube video right from where you suspended it, which is a perfect design if you are not on your computer all the time.
4. ClipGrab
Another Mac version YouTube video downloader added to this list is ClipGrab. ClipGrab is a completely free software which makes a living by donations, free as it’s, its video downloading feature doesn’t lose out to any competitor. ClipGrab allows you to search your videos directly through the address bar by keywords without opening YouTube, that’s quite time-saving.
When it comes to downloading YouTube videos, ClipGrab provides a super easy way to do that. Just copy and paste the link into the address box, it will show all the possible resolutions. You just click the “Grab this clip!” button, it will save the videos offline on the desktop of your MacBook or iMac.
5. MediaHuman YouTube Downloader
This Mac software can help you download videos from YouTube and many other similar video sharing websites like VKontakte, SoundCloud & Vevo etc.. What we love about this YouTube download app for Mac desktop is that it has so many practical features, such as simultaneous download, downloading HD & UHD videos such as 1080P, 2K, 4K & 8K, and the ability to download entire YouTube playlist & channel at a time.
Just like other YouTube downloader for Mac, MediaHuman also gives you options if you want to download the video or extract the audio track alone. This is a boon for people who enjoy music, it also can provide the original audio without quality loss. MediaHuman has many advanced features, you can find it in the preference setting, such as preventing from sleep while downloading, ignoring 30+ fps videos, using format priority list etc..
6. 5KPlayer
How can we download YouTube videos on MacBook in resolution up to 1080P, 2K, 4K or even 8K? Well, desktop packages can help you with that. Although these desktop software are not cross-platform, but they are more powerful in functions than online downloader on Safari. Downloading HD & UDH videos for those tools is just easy as pie. The best part of these software is that they can batch download all the videos on a playlist at one time, and grab the subtitles as well.
For YouTube download software on Mac, 5KPlayer is one of the best. This app works flawlessly on Mac system to download videos and movies in MP4, WebM, MKV, 3GP depending on your preferences. It also supports video resolutions from 360P, 720P, 1080P to 4K & 8K, which means it will allow you to download really high-resolution videos. This is perfect for those who want to download clear long videos, such as full feature films and documentaries.
7. Apowersoft
Perhaps what is great about this app is that it lets you convert videos to other file formats suitable for devices like iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, PSP, Kindle Fire, and other mobile devices. This Mac video downloader understands that some of us do not just watch videos on our computers, but also on other portable devices. But not just that, it also helps you download high-resolution videos outside of YouTube. You can also use this app to download videos from Twitter, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Facebook.
As a bonus feature, this easy-to-use app will even allow you to download YouTube playlist to your Mac. Not satisfied with the only downloading function, Apowersoft also integrates itself with screen record and video conversion section, now it becomes an one-stop tool. With Apowersoft in hand, one can easily download online videos from YouTube, record game videos, and convert videos taken by camera to more popular formats so that users can easily edit and upload them to YouTube.
8. Wondershare AllMyTube
Wondershare AllMyTube is a pretty popular app, probably one of the most used YouTube video downloader for Mac. Supporting many popular sites, AllMyTube can also convert videos to other formats or to music files, grab whole playlists and handle batch downloads all at once. It’s a shareware so you get limited functions, the free version can only allow users to download 2 videos, and there’s a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The design of AllMyTube is very intuitive, it has 4 parts: downloading, downloaded, converted & WiFi transfer. When you finish downloading your YouTube videos, you can convert them to other formats and send them to your phones directly by scanning the QR code. As a senior specialist for YouTube, AllMyTube supports download age-restricted YouTube videos, just input the login password, you can unblock the restriction.
9.iTube Studio for Mac
To save videos from YouTube on your Mac devices (MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac or Mac mini), we have another alternative for you – iTube Studio for Mac.
The best thing about this app is that it’s integrated with many useful functions, such as video downloading, recording, converting & transferring, totally an all-in-one tool. Equipped with a private mode, now you can use it to download videos in secret. As a professional video recorder, iTube allows you to record videos from Netflix, Hulu, iTunes & BBC iPlayer etc.. So if a video site is prohibited from downloading, you can just record them, nice design.
10. Total Video Downloader
There are multiple applications which you can utilize to save YouTube videos on your MacBook Air or Pro successfully, and Total Video Downloader is one of the best and fastest. This app is designed to download any video uploaded on the Internet, and it works exactly well for what it’s designed for.
This app offers an interface that looks like a web browser, so users can have easy access to many hot videos on YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo and Lynda. However, if this app is in running for one of the top apps to use when downloading videos, it will fall behind when it comes to format conversion. But that’s not a big deal, you can use other apps to convert videos instead. However, when it comes to downloading videos, this app is highly recommended.
11. YTD
Although we have talked about many desktop software that work smoothly on MacBook, I’d like to add another one to this list – YTD. YTD is also a popular app which we hear a lot. Users can easily navigate through this app and get on with their download without the challenge of getting familiar with the interface.
YTD lets you download videos just like other YouTube downloaders, but with an added bonus feature of allowing you to convert videos to different formats & cut the videos to your preferred length. What we love about this downloader is that it’s one of the most handy apps. It is very simple, and thus very easy to use.
12. Downie
Downie is video downloader for YouTube & many other video sites that works only on Mac operating system, and it requires macOS 10.11+, including Mojave, High Sierra, Sierra, EI Capitan. Like many other competitors, Downie supports many video hosting sites, including YouTube, Youku, Bilibili, Vimeo & SoundCloud etc., and the number is rapidly growing. It can grab HD videos up to 4K, and convert videos into MP4 or MP3 so you can play them on your iTunes.
Downie is multilingual, and it updates about once a week with new features, bug fixes, and new sites supported. What it attracts me is that the software can group the video file by site and playlist, so that all the downloads can be sorted into folders based on where you downloaded them from or from which playlist they are.
13. SConverter.com
When the topic of downloading YouTube videos on a MacBook comes up, usually there are 2 ways to do this. One is to install a full version program, just like the software I have mentioned above, or you can use an online video downloader, and SConverter.com is a good recommendation.
To make downloading YouTube videos as simple as possible, SConverter.com requires you to do nothing more than paste a link and hit ‘Download’ button. The downside of these sites is that they can only download videos from YouTube with the resolution up to 720P, while can’t do anything for the 1080P & higher resolution videos, such as 2K, 4K & 8K, let alone 60fps videos. But if you just want to download a single clip & save time, then an online YouTube downloader is ideal.
Convert Youtube Video To Mp4 Mac App Download
14. Softorino YouTube Converter 2
YouTube itself has no passage in downloading videos directly, on both desktop and mobile. However, sometimes you have your reasons to do this, especially when you are on trains, subways, buses, or trips to places without reliable 4G or WiFi. That being said, with a right YouTube video downloader in hand, grabbing videos from YouTube is a surprisingly easy thing, and it doesn’t require a high configuration laptop.
Softorino YouTube Converter 2 is a fast video download for Mac which can fully satisfy your needs without any complications. This tool allows you to download video from YouTube, SoundCloud, Vimeo, BandCamp, VK, LiveLeak, and many more. Apart from that, you can also download the content as video, audio, or even create them as ringtone. Integrated with an automatic Wi-Fi feature, now you can transfer downloaded media to other devices such as iPhone, iPod or iTunes at a fast speed without USB cable.
15. 4K Video Downloader for Mac
For those who want to download & keep videos from YouTube on their Apple computer, 4K Video Downloader for Mac has always been a good and reliable option. This desktop app for Mac covers many popular sites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Dailymotion and Metacafe, and it doesn’t have any snag in saving videos offline.
The developers of this tool pay great attention to simplicity and usability, you can download your favorite videos in the precise format or resolution you need, and has no hassle in downloading multiple videos in batch simultaneously. All in all, 4K Video Downloader for Mac is a good video downloading solution and it does what is promises without any complications.
In Conclusion
When you finish reading this article, you will have clear thought about how to download YouTube videos on a Mac computer. And now I’d like to hear from you: What’s your #1 YouTube video downloader for MacBook? If you have personally been using any app that is powerful, don’t be shy and type in your recommendations in the comments section below.
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