Download YouTube Videos: 23 Ways

Google has a substantial amount of cash reserves, but with all the recent lawsuits against YouTube, one has to wonder if it's time to salvage any videos you like from the service and save them somewhere where overzealous attorneys won’t find them – like your hard drive.

Fortunately, there are literally dozens of tools available for downloading videos from YouTube and/or converting those YouTube videos into formats other than .flv. It’s difficult to pick the best one, as each comes with its own set of pros and cons. Therefore, we’ve compiled a list of 23 YouTube downloader tools that we’ve confirmed actually work. Here they are, categorized according to the platform they support: