Downloading a YouTube video on a Mac, from Safari to QuickTime

By The Video Downloader team · 2026-10-09 · 7 min read

To download a YouTube video on a Mac, paste its link into the YouTube video downloader in Safari, Chrome or Firefox, choose MP4 video at 1080p, click Download, and allow downloads from the site if Safari asks. The file lands in your Downloads folder, named after the video. The decision that is specific to a Mac is the resolution. When we checked two 4K videos, every option from 1080p down came back as H.264, the codec Apple lists for iMovie and for MacBook Air playback, while 1440p and 2160p came back as VP9, which is on none of those lists.

The steps in Safari, Chrome or Firefox

The steps are identical in every Mac browser, because our server does the fetching and merging and the browser only receives a finished MP4. Nothing is installed.

1. In YouTube, copy the address from the address bar, or click Share under the video and then Copy.
2. Open the YouTube downloader page, click in the link box and press Command-V, or click Paste.
3. Click Fetch YouTube video. The title and thumbnail confirm you pasted the right upload.
4. Leave MP4 video selected and pick a resolution under Quality. 1080p is the safe choice on a Mac, for the codec reason below.
5. Click Download and wait while the status passes through the queue, the download and "Merging video and audio".
6. When it reads Ready, the browser saves the file by itself. If nothing arrives, click Save file.

Chrome and Firefox on a Mac

The page behaves the same in both. Chrome saves to /Users/yourname/Downloads unless you change it under Settings, then Downloads. If you also use a Windows laptop or a Chromebook, the guide for PCs and Chromebooks covers their folders.

The first download: Safari's permission question

Safari can ask before a site starts a download, so your first file from us may arrive with that question. Click Allow. Safari keeps that choice per site under Safari > Settings > Websites > Downloads, with three options: Ask, which checks with you first, Deny, which blocks the site's downloads, and Allow, which lets them through every time.

If you clicked the wrong button, our server still finishes the job but the file never reaches the Mac. Find our site in that Downloads list, set its pop-up menu to Allow or Ask, then click Download again.

Change only our entry, not the "When visiting other websites" menu below it, which applies to every site you have not set.

Finding the file once it lands

The video is in your Downloads folder, and Safari points straight at it. Click the Show Downloads button near the top right of the Safari window, then the magnifying glass next to the file name, and Finder shows it. Safari clears items from that list after one day by default, so for older downloads use the folder.

The Dock comes with a Downloads folder as standard. Control-click it and sort by date added, so the video you just saved is not buried among older files. To make Safari save somewhere else, pick a folder from the File download location menu under Safari > Settings > General. File naming and duplicate downloads are covered in the guide to where downloads go on a desktop.

Which resolution opens in QuickTime, Photos and iMovie

Choose 1080p or lower when the file has to open in Apple's own apps, because above 1080p YouTube offered no H.264 copy for either video we measured. We listed the streams YouTube offers for two public 4K videos, a 60fps short film and a 4K HDR travel film. Both had H.264 at 1080p and every height below it, and none at 1440p or 2160p, where only VP9 and AV1 were on offer.

Our MP4 option prefers H.264 at the height you pick, so 1080p gets you H.264 video with AAC sound. At 1440p and 2160p there is no H.264 to prefer, and running our exact selection on both videos returned VP9 inside the MP4. The wrapper is the same either way; the codec inside decides whether a Mac app opens the file, as the guide to 4K downloads and codecs explains.

Apple's import lists for iMovie and Final Cut Pro name H.264 and HEVC but neither VP9 nor AV1. MacBook Air spec pages list HEVC, H.264 and ProRes for playback, with AV1 added from the M3 chip onwards. Apple publishes no codec list for QuickTime Player itself, so treat a VP9 file as something to test on your own Mac rather than count on.

Putting the file into Photos or iMovie

In Photos, choose File > Import, select the MP4 and click Review for Import, or drag the file onto the Photos window or its Dock icon; it then appears in the Imports album. H.264 is the codec an iPhone itself records in its Most Compatible camera format, and in iMovie an H.264 MP4 is a listed format that imports as it is. For a clip heading onto a timeline, the guide to preparing clips for editing covers frame rate and why VP9 makes scrubbing sluggish.

4K on a MacBook Air: the storage and screen arithmetic

On a MacBook Air, 4K came to roughly eight times the size of 1080p in our check, and the built-in screen cannot show all of it. For the 10 minute 35 second, 60fps film we checked, the 1080p H.264 file comes to about 268 MB, while the 2160p VP9 copy our selection picked is estimated at about 2.2 GB before the sound is added.

Base storage is 256 GB on the 13-inch M2, M3 and M4 MacBook Air and 512 GB on the M5 models released in March 2026, and Apple notes that formatted capacity is lower. At this film's rates, 10 GB of free space holds about six and a half hours at 1080p, but only about three quarters of an hour at 2160p. A 60fps animation sits at the heavy end, and the guide to download file sizes explains why calmer footage comes in lighter.

Recent 13-inch MacBook Air screens are 2560 by 1664 pixels and the 15-inch 2880 by 1864, so a 3840 by 2160 frame is always scaled down. Full screen on the 13-inch, a widescreen video is 2560 pixels wide, exactly the width of 1440p. Take 4K for a 4K display or an edit where you will crop in; for watching on the laptop, 1080p is the copy Apple's apps open.

Long 4K videos can also run into this tool's 2 GB per-file ceiling. The 2160p copy of that ten minute film is already estimated at just over 2 GB, so for anything that long or longer, 1440p or 1080p is the safer setting.

Getting only the audio on a Mac

Pick MP3 audio or M4A audio instead of MP4 video, and our server never fetches the picture, so the file is small and arrives quickly.

To add it to the Music app, choose File > Import, which copies it into the Music media folder, or drag it onto the Music window. iMovie takes M4A and MP3 files dragged from the Finder straight onto the timeline. The file carries no tags or cover art, which leaves the video title in the filename as its only label. Which of the two formats to choose, and why no YouTube audio is really 320 kbit, is covered in the YouTube audio download guide.

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