YT to MP4

How to go from a YT link to an MP4

1. Copy the link. Any form works: the full youtube.com/watch?v= address, a youtu.be share link, a Shorts link, or the eleven-character video id on its own.
2. Paste it above and press Go. You see the title, channel and length within a second or two.
3. Pick MP4 360p for speed or 720p / 1080p / best for quality. 360p saves immediately; the HD options prepare a file with audio and then show a Download button.
4. Save it. The MP4 goes wherever your browser puts downloads.

"YT" is just YouTube

People type "yt" because it is quicker, and the tools they land on are all doing the same job: taking a YouTube link and producing a playable MP4. There is no special YT format and no separate YT site. What matters is that the tool recognises every shape of link YouTube produces, because the app, the website and the embed code each write it differently.

These all point at the same video and all work here:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123xyz45
• https://youtu.be/abc123xyz45
• https://www.youtube.com/shorts/abc123xyz45
• https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123xyz45
• https://www.youtube.com/embed/abc123xyz45
• abc123xyz45 on its own

Extra parameters do not matter. A link with &t=90s from the "start at" checkbox, &list= from a playlist, or ?si= from the app's share sheet still resolves to the video. What does not work is a link that does not name a video at all: a channel, a playlist page, or a search.

The fastest path on each device

iPhone or iPad. In the YouTube app, tap Share under the video, then Copy link. Switch to Safari, tap the address bar, paste, and go to vidstill. Paste the link into the box and choose a quality. Safari shows a download arrow at the top of the screen; the file is in the Files app under Downloads. Use Safari rather than the in-app browser of another app, because the in-app browser often cannot save files.

Android. Share → Copy link in the YouTube app, then paste into the box in Chrome. Chrome writes the MP4 to your Downloads folder and shows a notification you can tap to open it.

Mac or Windows. On the YouTube page press Ctrl+L (Cmd+L on Mac) to select the address, Ctrl+C to copy, then paste here. The whole trip from watching a video to having the 360p file is a few seconds; HD adds the time it takes us to merge the streams, usually under ten.

If speed is the point, the 360p option wins every time. It is the one size YouTube serves as a single file with audio already inside, so the browser fetches it straight from YouTube and nothing waits on our servers.

Short youtu.be links

The YouTube app and the Share button on the website hand out youtu.be links because they are shorter to paste into messages. They are not redirect links from a third party; youtu.be is a domain YouTube owns, and the path after the slash is the same video id as in the long form. We read the id directly, so a youtu.be link resolves as fast as the full one. The same is true of the ?si= tracking parameter the app appends: we ignore it.

Shorts

Shorts are ordinary YouTube videos with a vertical frame and a length under a minute, so everything on this page applies to them. Two things are worth knowing. First, the quality labels refer to the short side of the frame, so a "1080p" Short is 1080 pixels wide and 1920 tall, which is exactly what a phone screen wants. Second, because Shorts are brief, even the best option produces a small file, typically well under 50 MB, so there is little reason to settle for 360p unless you are in a hurry.

If you want to reuse your own Short on another platform, pick 1080p; the file is the same encoding YouTube plays and needs no further processing.

What you get at each quality

• 360p. One combined file from YouTube. Instant, small, plays everywhere.
• 720p. Our default suggestion for phones and tablets. Prepared in seconds with the audio merged in.
• 1080p. Full HD for laptops and TVs.
• Best. Whatever the upload allows, up to 4K. Big files; the picker only lists what exists for that video.
• MP3. Audio only, 192 kbps, when you need the sound and not the picture. See YouTube to MP3.

For all HD options we join YouTube's separate video and audio streams into one MP4 without re-encoding, so the picture is the one YouTube itself plays. Prepared files remain downloadable for about an hour.

When it does not work

• "That does not look like a supported link." Check that the pasted text contains a video id. Copying from a chat sometimes brings along surrounding words.
• "This video is unavailable." Private, deleted, age-restricted or region-locked videos cannot be fetched, and neither can live streams while they are live.
• "YouTube is rate-limiting us." Wait a minute and retry.
• Nothing downloads on iPhone. Make sure you are in Safari, not a browser embedded inside another app.
• Daily limit reached. Guests get three downloads a day, free accounts ten, Pro has no cap. See pricing.

The same link, as text

Every video you paste also opens a Transcript tab and a Summary tab. If you are saving a talk or tutorial, the transcript gives you a searchable copy with timestamps, and the summary tells you in a paragraph what the video covers. See YouTube transcript and YouTube summarizer.

A note on copyright

vidstill fetches public videos for you and does not keep copies; HD files are removed after about an hour. Save only what you are allowed to keep for personal, offline use, your own videos, or Creative Commons content, and do not re-upload or sell other people's work. Rights holders can request removal of a public video page via the DMCA page.