YouTube Has Started Giving This Premium Feature Away for Free
YouTube Premium is supposed to be the "ideal" YouTube experience. While the service is perfectly usable for free, Premium users get the extra perks, like no ads, complimentary YouTube Music, and an ever-growing list of features. So that's why it's interesting to see YouTube experimenting with offering a Premium-exclusive feature for free-at least, a watered-down version of it.
As highlighted by Techradar, some YouTube users are seeing the ability to download videos in the app, without having paid for Premium first. This has long been a Premium perk, and for good reason: Offline playback is a great feature for anyone traveling somewhere without an active internet connection, such as when flying or on a train with spotty service, or when keeping an eye on your data usage. As such, it's a strong incentive to subscribe to Premium for anyone who really needs to be able to watch videos whenever they want.
Techradar highlights this Reddit post, where the poster shows off the download capability in their YouTube app for iOS. All users have the "Download" button when viewing a video, but typically, free users will only see a prompt to upgrade to Premium if they tap it. This user, however, found that after accidentally tapping the "Download" button, they were prompted to download the video itself.
From the provided screenshot, you can see the app gives them the option to download the video in "Medium (360p)" quality, or "Low (144p)" quality. I'd hardly call 360p "Medium," and 144p is what the kids once called "potato quality," so these are not ideal resolutions whatsoever. That's where YouTube is giving an inch, while taking a mile: Just below these options, you'll see the choices to download the video in "Full HD (1080p)" or "High (720p)," just below a banner for YouTube Premium. YouTube conveniently reminds you that, "For high-quality unlimited downloads, ad-free and background play, get YouTube Premium."
New feature allowing users to download videos without premium (At not the best quality)
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In addition to these quality restrictions, you won't be able to download music videos for free. This is likely due to royalty issues to artists, since YouTube would be giving people a way to listen to music without the ad or Premium revenue. If you want to save music videos on your iPhone, you'll need to pay up.
I don't have the feature on my end just yet, so it's not clear how widespread this experiment may be. That being said, there are ways to download YouTube videos however you want, without YouTube Premium-so long as you're okay skirting the rules a bit.