Ordinary pages work, and three groups do not

What the word internet covers in practice here

A general downloader is not a list of approved sites. It is a reader that opens the address you give it, looks at what the page is serving, and reports the video files it finds. Nothing has to know the brand of the site in advance.

That means coverage is decided page by page rather than site by site. The same host can serve one page that works and another that does not, and the difference is in how the video on that page is published.

Pages that behave the way the reader expects

The large majority of video on the web sits on a page that anyone can open. A news article with a clip in it, a blog post, a company page, a forum thread, a video host, a social post from an open account: all of these hand the video to whoever asks.

Those pages produce a results list with real rows on it. The reading happens on our servers, so a phone and a laptop behave identically, and there is nothing to install for either.

The first group: a subscription catalogue

Films and series on a paid service are not published as files a reader can collect. The service delivers them under its own protection to its own player, and the page a visitor sees is a shopfront around that arrangement.

Pasting one of those addresses returns nothing, and that will not change. The catalogue is sealed deliberately, and no address you copy from inside the service reaches around it.

The second group: anything behind a sign-in

A page that checks who you are before it serves the video is checking our reader too, and our reader is nobody. A private social account, a members-only post, a course platform, an internal company site and a paywalled article all fall in here.

What the page returns to a signed-out request is the wall rather than the video, so the results list comes back empty. Being signed in yourself in another tab makes no difference, because none of that session travels with the address.

The third group: a broadcast still running

A live stream is being produced while you watch it. There is no finished file on the server, only the segments generated so far, so there is nothing complete to hand over.

Many broadcasts are published as an ordinary recording once they end. Waiting for the stream to finish and copying the address of the saved version turns a page in this group into a page in the first group.

Sorting a page in about ten seconds

You can place a page in one of the four groups without leaving your browser.

Do this before you copy anything and you will rarely paste an address that cannot work.

• Load the page in a private browsing window, where no account of yours is signed in.
• If the video plays there, the page is in the group that works.
• If a sign-in form, a paywall or a subscribe panel appears instead, it is behind a wall.
• If a red live marker or a running clock is on the player, wait for the recording.
• Check the address names one video rather than a channel, a feed or a search result.

An empty list is an answer

When Analyze comes back with no rows, it has read the page and found nothing being served. That is information rather than a failure, and it usually places the page in one of the three groups above.

The remaining case is an address that never pointed at a single video: a homepage, a channel, a profile, a playlist or a set of search results. Open the one video you want on its own page first, then copy that address and paste it.

What free use covers across all of this

Free use allows 3 downloads a day, and the count goes back to three at midnight UTC. One file has to stay under 150 MB, which is the limit you meet on long recordings rather than on ordinary clips. Pro sets aside the daily count, lifts the 150 MB ceiling and clears the advertising.

A prepared file is held on a short timer and then cleared, so press Download file while the page is open and leave the tab up until the transfer ends. The copy that lands is on your own device from that point.

Related pages

• The four categories in more detail
• Video embedded on a non-video site
• Addresses that hold no video
• Working in a browser with nothing installed
• What happens between Analyze and the file