It’s 2021 and downloading videos off YouTube still a thing for various reasons. But be respectful to the copyrighted content there, obey the law and don’t be stupid trying to illegally download the content there to make yourself money out of it.

Now, if you have a legit reason that you need to download the video off YouTube, here is a fairly easy way of doing it, using a tool that you most likely already have installed on your computer.

First, find the video you want to download and copy its URL.

Then, open VLC Player on your computer, click Media > Open Network Stream…

Paste the URL in the URL box and click Play.

Video will now load momentarily. Once it’s started, go to Tools and click Media Information from the top toolbar.

Now here is the important and tricky part. Highlight everything listed in the Location box at the bottom of the dialog box and press Ctrl + C to copy it to the clipboard.

Open your favorite browser and paste in the location URL and hit enter. You will see the video right inside the browser page. Click on the vertical stacked 3-dot icon on the right bottom corner, and click “Download” from the context menu that pops up.

The video will now be downloaded in your default downloads folder, namely videoplayback.mp4 as default.