My Quest to Download Entire YouTube Channels
I’ve been archiving cooking tutorials from my favorite channels lately. Wanted them all offline for my camping trip where there’s zero signal. Figured there must be an easy way to grab entire channels at once instead of clicking each video manually.
Started with my usual method – searched online for tools promising batch downloads. First one that popped up looked sleek. Installed it immediately. Halfway through installing, my antivirus went bananas flashing red alerts. Uninstalled that crap faster than I clicked download.
Tried three more desktop applications:
- BigNameDownloader5000: Wanted $39.99 after the first two downloads. Scam vibes.
- TubeGrabberPro: Literally froze my PC when I pasted a channel link. Had to hard reboot.
- FreeYTArchiver: Actually downloaded 4 videos! Then started injecting ads into the downloaded files. Unacceptable.
The Turning Point
Got super frustrated until I remembered this simple command-line thing. Something I’d used years ago for single videos. Fired up the terminal and typed:
youtubedl_command –list-all [imaginary tool name disguised]
It actually scanned the whole channel! Then ran:
youtubedl_command –download-archive
And holy crap – it started fetching everything! Saw the terminal scrolling like the Matrix. Left it running overnight.
Reality Check
Woke up to find:
- My 1TB hard drive completely full
- Files named like “video_3425_*4” with no titles
- 720p max quality despite selecting “best”
Then discovered it hadn’t grabbed any descriptions or thumbnails. Just raw video files in chaos.
Was It Worth It?
Honestly? Not really. The tool technically worked free of cost, but I spent more time organizing files than watching videos. Should’ve just downloaded specific playlists.
Ended up deleting 80% of them because I’ll never watch that “10 minute cabbage slicing ASMR” video anyway. Lesson learned: Sometimes free comes with hidden costs of your time and sanity.
