Download Videos Straight from YouTube to Your iPhone

If you’ve ever wanted to download YouTube videos directly to your iPhone, there’s an easy solution — just update to iOS 12 and install Apple’s new Shortcuts app. With the Workflow-replacement app, you can add a shortcut that lets you download any YouTube video you want, without needing to jailbreak or use shady third-party tools.

Over the years, countless apps and methods have surfaced for bypassing YouTube’s restrictions and downloading YouTube videos to your iPhone’s media library. Google quickly strikes them down, so they never lasted long. You can still sideload apps like YouTube++, but that’s risky since you’ll be missing out on the App Store’s protections from spam and platform misuse.

A safer way to save YouTube videos to your “Camera Roll” and “Videos” albums is to use a shortcut in the Shortcuts app to hook onto YouTube’s own API, so you get the video right from the source. It’s also likely to work for a long time unlike those shady apps of yore.

Of course, by using a shortcut to download YouTube videos onto your iPhone, you won’t be helping the platform. Most of all, you’ll just hurt the creators you watch. If you want or need to view YouTube content on-the-go, we’d still recommend you subscribe to YouTube Premium.

Step 1: Add the ‘Download YouTube’ Shortcut

Unlike other shortcuts, you won’t find this one in the Shortcuts “Gallery” tab. If you don’t create this shortcut yourself…