YouTube has implemented an experimental feature that allows desktop users to download videos to their devices for offline listening.
If you’re a YouTube Premium subscriber, you can go to the YouTube Expiremintal feature page to enable this feature. Keep in mind that if you do this and have the picture-and-picture (PiP) experiment turned on, it will disable. This kind of sucks, and since I find the PiP feature more useful, I hope YouTube fully implements it soon.
The ability to download videos likely doesn’t sound very useful to anyone with a desktop computer, but Chromebook and laptop owners might find it appealing. One possible use case is to queue up some sick YouTube content for long car rides or other away from home excursions.
Google says that anyone with the latest versions of Chrome, Edge or Opera can use the new feature, but it enabled a download button and folder on Edge in my tests and didn’t work. Chrome prompted me to download the YouTube web app, and from there, I was able to get the feature working.
Once the feature is enabled, you can download videos by clicking on a download button next to the like and share buttons in the action bar. You can also click on the three-dot menu from any of the more browseable pages to download content.
Overall this is a pretty solid update, and like the PiP feature on iOS, I’m still perplexed that these aren’t rolling out to everyone, and instead, YouTube Premium members need to opt into them.
Source: YouTube
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