Among the most in-demand types of applications we can find multimedia players and image editors, although we also cannot download those applications that make it easier to use the YouTube platform.
Although YouTube is natively accessed and managed from a web browser or from its applications for mobile devices, there are also other applications that function as features that are usually found in the native YouTube application as well as applications that extend the type of use .
Among these, we can find those that attempt to block the advertising and ads we constantly encounter in videos and on the platform. Others allow us to download videos for later viewing.
That is why today we will talk about an excellent application that will help us with this work.
About Video Downloader
Video Downloader is a simple yet powerful free and open-source application designed to run on Linux systems. Its code can be found on GitHub and is distributed under the GPL-3.0+ license.
It is important to note that Video Downloader is based on youtube-dl and that despite this, the features offered by the application are relatively limited compared to what youtube-dl offers.
So Video Downloader can be considered as a GUI for youtube-dl but barely under development.
Among the main features of the application, it stands out that it allows us to convert videos to mp3.
Video Downloader also supports downloading password-protected and private videos. (Access link or credentials required).
In addition, it is possible to download the videos individually (this from the url) or complete playlists (in the same way it has support to download the url of the list).
Another feature found in Video Downloader is that it allows you to automatically select a video format based on your preferred resolution.
How to install Video Downloader on Linux?
For those who are interested in being able to install this application on their systems, they can do it in two ways, so they can choose the one they like.
The first method to install Video Downloader on your Linux distribution is with the help of Flatpak packages, so you must have support for installing this type of application on your system.
The installation is carried out by opening a terminal and on it we are going to type the following command:
flatpak install --user https://flathub.org/repo/appstream/com.github.unrud.VideoDownloader.flatpakref
We respond with “y” to accept the download and installation and wait for this to finish so that we can start using Video Downloader on the system.
In case you cannot find the application in the applications menu, you can run it from the terminal with the help of the following command:
flatpak run com.github.unrud.VideoDownloader
As extra data, if you want to check if there is an update to the application, you can do this by executing the following command in the terminal:
flatpak --user update com.github.unrud.VideoDownloader
The other installation method we have to obtain this application and have it on the system is with the help of Snap packages.
So you will have to have the support to be able to install this type of application on your system.
The installation can be done by opening a terminal on your system and in it you are going to type the following command:
sudo snap install video-downloader
And that's it, you can start using this application on your system.
Using Video Downloader
To use the application we will have to open it and in it we will see that the GUI is quite simple and very intuitive.
We just have to select what we want to download if the video or just the audio of it.
We place the url and click on the "Download" button.
Finally, the downloaded videos or audio files (converted) will be found inside a folder called "VideoDownloader" that is inside your "Downloads" folder.