Mac owners have fewer options to pick from – but that doesn’t mean we’re out of luck. There are several YouTube downloaders available that work as well or better than anything you would find on Windows.

ClipGrab

If you’re looking for one piece of software that can handle not just YouTube downloads, but also a number of other sites, ClipGrab is a good choice.

What I like about ClipGrab is the interface. Instead of asking you to enter a YouTube video’s link, you can search YouTube through the software to find relevant videos. This search function is quick and returns relevant content, though it is limited to four results – a handicap I’d like to see removed.

ClipGrab can also download via URL. The manager could not be easier to use and allows for a number of different download formats including MPEG4, WMV and OGG (among others).

Though the search function only works with YouTube, the software is capable of downloading from some other sites if you enter a video’s URL. Supported sites include Clipfish, Collegehumor, Dailymotion, MyVideo, MySpass, Sevenload, Tudou and Vimeo.

ClipGrab works with all recent versions of OS X.

Fastest Free YouTube Downloader

As the name implies, Fastest Free YouTube Downloader is built to be speedy. It is supposedly able to download videos at over 5MB/sec – if you have an Internet connection that can support it.

In my testing I was only able to achieve a maximum of 1.9MB/sec, which is among the quicker download speeds I’ve been able to achieve with my connection. Stopwatch tests showed that this software does download a three minute long 720p clip at least twenty seconds faster than the other programs here. So it appears there is some merit to the “fastest” label.

What you may like even more, however, is the direct interface and large number of video conversion options. You only need to enter a YouTube video link and hit Start Download – but before you do that, you can choose to save the video in one of over 40 formats.

Fastest YouTube Downloader works with OS X Snow Leopard and Lion.

4k Video Downloader

Another simple YouTube Downloader, 4k Video Downloader supports not only YouTube but also a number of other sites such as Vimeo and Dailymotion. You download videos simply by copying the URL from your browser and then clicking the “Paste URL” button in the software.

Nothing special, right? But 4k does offer something a bit unusual – the ability to download entire YouTube playlists. You can do this simply by pasting the URL of any video that is a part of a playlist. The software automatically detects it and will give you the option to download all related videos.

Conversion options are limited, but include the most popular options – FLV, MP4, MKV and MP3. You can choose video quality and format each time you download, or you can enable “smart mode” which applies the same options to all videos automatically, taking an extra step out of the process.

4k Video Downloader works with all recent versions of OS X.

Tubulator

This app calls itself “the YouTube browser.” Like ClipGrab, there is a search function included – but it’s far more robust, and allows for far more results to appear. And yes, it does work like a browser. You enter the term you’d like to search for in the search bar, and results appear. Tubulator doesn’t just give you results either – it actually gives you a fair amount of information including thumbnails, duration, quality and more.

When it comes time to download, you won’t find many format options. Video is converted to MP4, while audio-only downloads can be converted to MP3 or OGG. You can also select a preferred video quality.

Obviously, this isn’t the best choice if format choice is your primary concern. It is, however, a good choice if you want to browse videos rather than download a specific video you’ve already viewed.

Tubulator works with all recent versions of OS X.

Conclusion

Of the options here, I’ve used ClipGrab the most in the past. I like the interface and the conversion options are good enough for my needs.

I’m also partial to Fastest Free YouTube Downloader, however – and 4k Video Downloader’s ability to handle playlists is great, as well. Several of my favorite YouTube channels group similar videos by playlist, making 4k the best option for grabbing a lot of content at once.

I suggest giving all of these options a shot to discover which one works best for you.

To help you guys fall in love with this little tool, I’m here to show you how to use JDownloader, in conjunction with a free and simple web tool, to mass download images or other files from open directories and websites.

In this example, I’ll be using an open directory that I found over at /r/opendirectories on Reddit. That’s a great little spot to find downloadable content in ridiculous amounts. From there, I’ve managed to find an open directory full of sound effects. Let’s check out one with sound effects for animals and birds (this link may be dead before you’re able to get to it, so a screenshot is below).

We’re hoarders and we want it all. The next step is to go to Webmaster Toolkit’s Link Extractor. This unique little tool will extract the links and images of any website you push through. Let’s copy and paste the open directory’s URL here. Since they’re links, we are extracting HREFs, not IMGs. IMGs would be used for extracting images. Those results should show up as displayed below.

Copy all of the results, excluding the last one. The last one is the parent directory link, which is basically one folder up in the directory. For anyone downloading from many open directories, you’ll always want to exclude the last result. Even if you include it though, you’ll just be downloading a single HTML webpage, so it’s not a big deal. Make sure the results are copied to your clipboard.

Your next step is to download JDownloader and get it running.

Now let’s select where you’ll be saving the files to. Click on the Settings tab and you should see the following.

After you’ve selected your directory, click the Linkgrabber tab. The Linkgrabber is basically JDownloader’s built-in system for checking the validity of links. That way, you won’t be attempting to download 404 pages or files that do not exist. It’s a good middleman between you and getting the files you want. Near the bottom left of this window, click Add URL(s). You should then see the following.

JDownloader has attempted to pull the list of URLs we copied from your clipboard, but for some reason the application seems to handle URLs with spaces incorrectly. Links should not include spaces, anyway.

Let’s bring up Notepad now. Paste your list of URLs. From the Edit menu, click Replace…. In the Find what: field, you want to put in a space. In the Replace with field, you want to enter “%20″ (without quotes). %20 is the hexidecimal value for a space. Then click Replace All. It should then replace all spaces with the hexidecimal value, and you’ll see an awful lot of them in your list. Don’t worry, that means it worked (you do not need to include this step in the process for websites without spaces in links, which is the case 99% of the time).

Now we want to copy that list of URLs. Delete the single line in the JDownloader list and paste our new list. JDownloader then proceeds to check every file in the list and gives you a total download size.

Now, click the play button at the top to start your downloads. You’ll be automatically switched to the Downloads tab and you’ll be able to monitor your download progress. Your files are now downloading!

Remember, using the link extractor you can extract HREFs or IMGs. If you have a particular page, forum thread, or other website filled with images you want to save, you can use this exact same process.

If you need any help or have any other questions regarding this little method, feel free to drop a line in the comments. JDownloader is for more advanced users (in my opinion) and further unassisted configuration can get a little tricky. I’m here to help.

Ubuntu users get their software from the Ubuntu Software Center, or the command-line based “apt-get”. These programs, in turn, get software from online repositories, which are essentially collections of software that automatically provide updates. By default Ubuntu can access thousands of programs in the repositories.

So what’s a a PPA? It’s basically a repository designed to keep a particular piece of software up-to-date faster than the Ubuntu team can. These PPAs can also provide access to brand new programs not available by default in Ubuntu. Find more information in my article what is an Ubuntu PPA?.

As that article points out, there are relatively simple-to-use command line tools for adding a PPA to your system. If you’d like to avoid the command line, however, Y PPA Manager can help you manage your PPAs (though you will need the command line to install it!)

So What Does This Thing Do?

Start up this program and you’ll see the program’s main interface, which outlines what the program does nicely:

First off, naturally, is adding a new PPA. Doing this is simple: just add the name of the PPA you want to add.

Once you do, assuming you’ve made no mistakes in the name, Y PPA Manager will automatically add the PPA and refresh all packages. You’ll see a popup when the process is complete:

Once you see this notification you can find the software you’re looking for in the Ubuntu Software Center or whatever package manager you make use of regularly.

You can also remove PPAs, which is self-explanatory.

Wondering what’s in some of the PPAs you added a few months ago? You can pull up a list of all packages, if you want. Just open the list menu and pick which PPA you want to investigate.

There are some advanced options. For example, you can “purge” a PPA, meaning the PPA is removed along with all packages inside it. You can also back up your repositories, which is perfect for when you’re re-installing Ubuntu or switching to a new computer.

PPAs are typically found on the web, when you discover a great new piece of software you want to try out. Sometimes though, you may want to find a PPA for a particular piece of software you already know about. Y PPA’s search function is perfect for this.

Finally, there are a few settings you can configure, including an Indicator and the version of Ubuntu you’re using.

Overall the program is easy to use for those used to using GUIs, meaning PPAs can now be used by just about anyone.

Installing Y PPA Manager

There’s a chicken-egg problem here, though. In order to install Y PPA Manager you need to add a PPA, without a friendly GUI. Don’t worry, it’s relatively easy. Open your command line and copy these lines over, one at a time:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager

“But wait,” I hear you say, “if installing a PPA without this program is so simple, why does anyone need this program?”

You’re just hard to please, aren’t you? Having said that, Y PPA Manager does a lot more than just add PPAs and is certainly worth having around even if “add-apt-repository” is a relatively straight-forward command.

Enough about my thoughts, though – what do you think? Please join me to chat about this program in the comments below, because I love hearing from you.

Oh, one more thing – this program is the hard work of Andrew over at Web Upd8, which is an amazing Ubuntu and Linux blog you guys should check out.

Not only does the built-in downloader in Safari not natively support pause and resume, the process of trying to grab a file and simply download it becomes a hassle. Here is where download managers such as Meteoric come in handy.

Meteoric is much more than just a download manager – it has its own built in browser, media player and can sync with numerous services. The free version supports downloads of up to 2MB, but the full version comes with the easy-to-swallow price tag of $1.99 (or $2.99 for the HD, iPad version). Let’s see what it can do.

Downloading

There are several possible ways to download using Meteoric. The first and most obvious one is to click the download link. But there isn’t always a download link. What then?

First, you can try a long tap on the item you wish to download. This opens a force-download menu from which you can choose “Download”.  You can also choose to copy the link URL to use in the next method.

If this doesn’t work, you can download manually using the URL. Tap the manual download icon on the top right. The URL will either automatically appear in the dialog or you will have to copy and paste it manually.

If this too fails, don’t despair! Click the small plugin icon to the left of the address bar (the one that looks like a puzzle pieces), and a whole new world of awesome plugins will open at the bottom of your screen. For this purpose, choose “List all Links”.

This will open a new page with only links in it. You should now be able to access the video/audio (or whichever) link you were looking for, and start downloading simply by tapping it.

Either way, when you start a download you will get the chance to choose the name of the file. You can ignore this and Meteoric will give it the default name.

At any time, you can access your downloads manager and view all in-progress and finished downloads. From here you can also access the file manager, which we will look at later.

You can easily transfer the files you download to your computer. There are numerous ways to do this, such as Dropbox, e-mail and good old iTunes. When you plug your device, launch iTunes and click on your device. Go to the Apps tab, scroll down to File Sharing, choose Meteoric from the list and you will be able to access all your downloaded files.

Managing and Playing

As mentioned earlier, Meteoric tries to provide a sort of all-in-one solution. The file manager is easy to use and organize, and you can create folders and arrange things as you see fit. You can also easily delete and rename files.

Long tap on a file to access this context menu. From here you can move the file, open it using other applications, or e-mail it. You can also link Meteoric to Dropbox from here for easy file transfer to multiple computers.

Each file comes with an icon according to its file type. Tapping on the file will open a “preview”, which actually allows you to view the file. If you can’t open a file in preview, it might be due to the file’s extension. Try renaming it and adding .mp4, for example. This way, I managed to turn an unopenable file into a working video file.

Meteoric also comes complete with a built-in media player, but for some reason I couldn’t manage to play videos in it (the files were working in other players). I did manage to use it for audio files, though. You can easily create playlists and listen to music right within Meteoric.

More Options

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what Meteoric can do. A quick look at the settings reveals a plethora of options to play with. You can pretty much customize every aspect of the app, including which browser it should try to imitate.

There are also multiple plugins for social sharing, converters, and even an option to sync to Firefox.

If you feel a bit lost, there’s an extensive FAQ which you can access at any time by lightly scrolling down and releasing. This will load a “Magic bar” which contains a help button.

Bottom Line

There’s no doubt that Meteoric turns a sometimes impossible task into an easy one. If you’re a regular downloader and you’d like to use your iOS device for this purpose, Meteoric is well worth the effort (and money).

I did find it a bit hard to deal with at first. The interface is well thought out, but it still takes some time to get everything working just right. When it does, Meteoric is a great addition to any download-loving iOS user.

What do you think of Meteoric? Know of a better way to download files on iOS devices? Please share in the comments!

Our Best Of: Windows Software page is gaining popularity! If you haven’t any idea what it is, well, check it out.

It’s basically a page where we share our favourite Windows apps — those that we absolutely love and think you should use. We’ve recently revamped it to include 15 new applications.

1. Superantispyware — under Malware/Spyware Removal
2. CopyTo Synchronizer — under Backup
3. IObit Advanced SystemCare Free — under System Maintenance
4. Trillian Astra — under Communication
5. Format Factory — under Video tools
6. DropIt — under Files/Drives
7. LibreOffice — under Documents
8. PDFTK Builder — under Documents
9. Q-Dir — under Productivity
10. ClipX — under Productivity
11. Free Download Manager — under Downloads
12. Keepass — under Others
13. LiberKey — under Others
14. Hiren’s BootCD — under Others
15. Eraser — under Others

Go ahead, head over to The Best Of: Windows Software page and check the new apps out!

Also, help us spread the word by sharing the page with friends.