Why won't this video download?

Start here: is it the link, or the video?

Nearly every failed download is one of two problems: the URL you handed us, or the video it points at. Telling them apart takes about ten seconds, and it decides everything. A link problem is yours to fix in a single paste. A locked video is out of everyone's reach — ours included — and no amount of retrying changes that.

The quickest tell is the message on your screen. We write errors in plain words on purpose, and each one points at a different cause. Match the wording below to the section that explains it, and skip the rest.

"That link didn't work" is almost always the URL. "This one's off-limits" is almost always the video itself.

"That link didn't work": the URL is the wrong shape

This is the most common failure by a wide margin, and the least serious. YouTube puts a Share button on channels, playlists, and search results as well as on videos, so it's genuinely easy to copy the wrong one. We can only fetch a single video, so anything that isn't a single video's address comes back empty.

The fix is to open the one video you actually want, then copy again — from the address bar on a computer, or Share then Copy link in the app. The step-by-step guide shows exactly where that button sits on each device. Paste the clean link and it resolves.

• Works — a watch link: youtube.com/watch?v= plus an 11-character code
• Works — the short form: youtu.be/ plus that same code
• Works — a Shorts link: youtube.com/shorts/…
• Won't fetch — a channel or handle, like youtube.com/@name
• Won't fetch — a playlist: any URL with list= and no watch?v=
• Won't fetch — a search page or the YouTube homepage

"This one's off-limits": some videos are genuinely locked

A handful of videos can't be downloaded by anyone outside YouTube, and we'd rather tell you plainly than pretend to try. These aren't our limits — they're the uploader's or the platform's — and there is no honest tool that gets around them.

Two of these fix themselves with time. A live stream usually becomes an ordinary, downloadable video once the creator publishes the recording, and a premiere unlocks the moment its countdown ends. Come back after either and paste again.

• Private videos — visible only to accounts the owner invited
• Members-only videos — gated behind a channel's paid membership
• Age-restricted videos that won't resolve without a signed-in, verified account
• Live streams while they're still airing — there's no finished file yet
• Premieres that haven't premiered — the video isn't public until the countdown ends

Any site claiming it can reach private or members-only videos is fishing for your YouTube password. The "feature" is a login page in disguise — never hand it your credentials.

Why 1080p isn't available for this video

If you expected 1080p and see only 720p and below, the resolution you're after probably never existed. We list exactly what YouTube stores for a video and nothing more — no downloader can invent detail the uploader never recorded. A clip posted at 720p has no 1080p version anywhere, so that row simply won't appear.

Brand-new uploads are the other case. YouTube processes the low resolutions first and the higher ones anywhere from minutes to a couple of hours later, so a video published twenty minutes ago might show only 360p for now. Give it an hour and the full list usually fills in. One ceiling won't move, though: 1080p is as high as we go, so there's no 4K here — the YouTube to MP4 page explains why that trade is deliberate.

The download starts, then dies partway

A transfer that begins and then stops is almost never a broken file — it's the connection. Start it again first; most of the time the second attempt sails through. If it keeps failing at 1080p, drop to the 720p row: a roughly 130 MB file survives a shaky connection far better than a roughly 250 MB one, and on a phone screen you won't see the difference.

There's one non-obvious cause worth knowing. The download link we generate expires after a few hours. If you fetched a video this morning and clicked its button tonight, nothing happens — the link is stale, not the video. Re-paste the original YouTube URL and we'll hand you a fresh one.

Download links expire after a few hours. If an old one does nothing, re-paste the YouTube URL for a new link.

"Easy does it": you've hit the rate limit

To keep the service usable for everyone, each visitor gets roughly ten requests a minute. Fetch a dozen videos in quick succession and you'll see "Easy does it" — not a ban, just a brief pause. Wait about a minute and the counter clears; there's nothing to fix and nothing to click.

A different limit trips on very long videos: the per-file cap is 1 GB. A two-hour talk at 1080p can push past it — the honest arithmetic on how big a download gets shows exactly when. When it does, drop to 720p, or if you only need the sound, convert it to MP3 and land the same two hours near 120 MB instead of well over a gigabyte.

If the video route struggles, the picture and the clip have their own doors

Two things people try to pull through the main downloader have dedicated tools that work differently. If you only wanted the cover image, the thumbnail downloader fetches it straight from YouTube's image servers to your browser — it never touches our server — in every size YouTube keeps, up to 1280x720. That path sidesteps video resolution entirely.

Vertical clips are the other one. If a Short won't behave in the standard box, the Shorts downloader is built for the 9:16 frame and keeps it exactly as uploaded, up to 1080x1920 and three minutes long, with no watermark. Same paste — a tool shaped for the format.

When the fix is simply: try again

Some failures are just weather. "Something hiccuped" means a transient error on the way to YouTube — retry and it usually clears. "Taking too long" means the fetch ran past our timeout, often on an unusually long video or a slow moment; give it another go, and drop a tier if it repeats. Neither means anything is broken.

If a retry, a clean link, and a lower resolution all come up empty, the answer is probably one of the locked cases above rather than a glitch. The FAQ covers the edge cases we didn't, and when you're ready to start fresh, paste again on the main downloader.