Want to save your favorite YouTube videos to your Google Drive storage? It seems impossible at first sight since YouTube doesn’t allow downloading videos, but it isn’t. There are plenty of methods that you can follow to save any YouTube video to Google Drive storage very easily.
In this article, we are going to talk about some of the easiest methods to save YouTube videos to Google Drive.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started –
How to Save a YouTube Video to Google Drive
Saving a YouTube video is quite challenging. At first, YouTube completely restricted extensions from grabbing video files from YouTube, and now, they have made the download function exclusively for YouTube Premium users.
Despite that, there are plenty of ways to save YouTube videos to your local storage or your Google Drive very easily. Note that these techniques for downloading YouTube videos or saving them to Google Drive are legal and violate YouTube’s policy.
Therefore, if you are using the unethical method to download YouTube videos, you will be completely responsible for any consequences. This article is just for educational purposes.
Read How to Organize Shared With Me Files in Google Drive
How to Save a YouTube Video to Google Drive using Chrome Extension
Even though YouTube has blocked a big majority of Chrome extensions from grabbing the data of YouTube videos, there is a way you can use Google Drive’s official Save to Google Drive Chrome extension to save YouTube videos directly to Google Drive.
To do this, you have to follow these simple steps –
- Open the Chrome browser on your PC.
- Now, visit the Chrome Web Store and install the Save to Google Drive extension. You can use this link to visit the extension page directly.
- After installing the extension, click on the Extensions icon and pin the Save to Google Drive extension for easier access. You can skip this step if this extension is already visible on your browser’s toolbar.
- Now, right-click on the Save to Google Drive extension and click on Options.
- Here, you will see a setting named Save to folder. Click on the Change designation folder option.
- It will open a pop-up box. Here, you have to select the folder where you want to save YouTube videos.
- After that, go to YouTube.com and open the video that you want to save to your Google Drive.
- Click on the video URL and copy it.
- Now, go to the Savefrom.net website. You can click on this link to visit the website directly.
- Past the URL on the box and click on the download button. This will generate a link to download that video for you.
- Once the link is generated, right-click on the Download button and select the option that says Save Link to Google Drive.
- This will initiate the download process to Google Drive. This process will take a few seconds to a couple of minutes to finish, depending on the size of the video.
- Once the process completes, you will see Rename, Trash, and Close options. You can use the Rename option if you want to rename this recently saved video. Otherwise, click on the Close option to exit from the window.
That’s it. You have successfully saved a YouTube video to your Google Drive storage. You can double-check it by visiting the folder you selected to save YouTube videos on your Google Drive.
Read How to View ZIP files in Google Drive
How to Manually Save a YouTube Video to Google Drive
Even though the guide mentioned above is quite simple and easy to follow, it possesses a few limitations. One of the biggest ones is that you need to use the Chrome browser. The Save to Google Drive extension isn’t available for other browsers such as Firefox and Opera.
Another considerable disadvantage of the method mentioned above is that it is restricted to a PC only. You cannot use this technique if you are on a smartphone or other device.
These are a few reasons I am mentioning a manual method that will be quite functional, easy to execute, and will work on almost all devices. However, you will be required to put in the extra effort.
So, here is how you can manually save a YouTube video to Google Drive –
- Open the YouTube app.
- Now, open the YouTube video you want to save to your Google Drive.
- Copy the URL of the video. You can do this by directly copying the URL from the address bar, or if you are using the mobile application, you can copy the link by clicking on the Share button.
- Now, go to the SaveFrom.net website and paste the URL to the Paste your video link here box and click on the Download button.
- Once the website generates a download link, click on the Download button to download the video.
- After that, go to the Google Drive mobile app.
- Now, open the folder and upload the video there.
It will take a couple of minutes, depending on the video size and your internet speed, to upload the video to your Google Drive.
Disclaimer – Due to copyright issues, Google Drive can take down the video you have uploaded without any prior notice. Google Drive doesn’t do it very often, and I’ve never faced any such issue so far, but there are possibilities. Therefore, do it at your own risk.
Read How to Rename Multiple Files On Google Drive
Yes, it is possible to download YouTube videos that you have stored in your Google Drive.
Even though there are plenty of ways to do that, the easiest one is to upload the video to your Google Drive and then share the link of the video with others. This way, other users will not only be able to see the video but will also be able to download it.
Conclusion
There you have it – the two best methods to save a YouTube video to Google Drive.
During this whole tutorial, we mentioned using the SaveFrom.net video downloader, but that is not something that you must have to follow. You can use any other YouTube video downloader of your choice. The reason we used SaveFrom.net is that it is one of the oldest YouTube video downloaders out there, and it is quite reliable too.
Also, keep in mind that we are downloading YouTube videos in both techniques, which is against YouTube’s copyright policy. So far, we haven’t seen any incident where anyone who has downloaded YouTube videos has faced any legal issue, but there can be consequences, and if you fall into one, you are the one responsible for it.
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Hello, my name is Shirley. I’m a Google Drive expert and have been working with the platform since it launched. I’ve written extensively about Google Drive tips and tricks, and have created numerous tutorials on how to get the most out of the platform. I also enjoy creating tutorials to help people learn how to use Drive like pros. Read more