How to save those toddler YouTube videos for offline playback

There are things I never thought I’d do as a parent, right up there with pulling a stuck poop ball out of a toddler’s butt is saving a copy of an hour long Wheels on the Bus video to my phone so she can watch it while in the car, bored out of her toddler skull.

There’s really not a lot you can do while driving a car with a bored toddler other than listen to screaming and attempt to placate them with “we’ll be there soon,” slapping their favorite music or video in front of them works wonders.

Keep in mind what you’ll be doing here is probably violating copyright/intellectual property laws, going against the DMCA, against what you agreed to in the Google/YouTube Terms of service, and quite possibly a punishable offense if anyone really wanted to press it, I don’t think YouTube is going to, who knows. It also might save your life because you can actually hear a siren instead of toddler wails of misery, so who knows.

First off, go to youtube, find your video. For purposes of this example we’ll use one located at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP-MbfHFUqs which is a Wheels on the Bus video my toddler can’t get enough of.

All you’re going to do is change the url to https://www.ssyoutube.com/watch?v=HP-MbfHFUqs – that’s add an “SS” before the word YouTube and navigate to that address. This will take you to a website called SaveFrom.Net and prepopulate with the Wheels on the Bus link.

Without installing anything you can download a 720p mp4 of the video for offline viewing. Just slap that on your mobile device, and play away.

If you’re feeling brave you can also install some software they suggest, but as it stands the only thing I need is the ability to play that video when my Sprint service sucks and I’m driving, which is most of the time. SaveFrom.net doesn’t require any software install to grab a video. You can do it with pretty much any browser or security settings.

Keep in mind that most content producers on YouTube get their money from some form of advertising that is played before, after, or during a video. So if you’ve got internet, please don’t offline view everything. Content creators have to get paid somehow.

Should also be noted that some videos will have higher bitrates available but will note that there’s no audio. Just make sure you’re getting one with video and audio and you should be set.

If you’re doing this from your device, the video should be in your downloaded videos folder. On Android you can just play from there, on iOS I’ll have to check and see if it doesn’t require a helper app – I’m not near iProduct at the moment.