Download YouTube videos in original format with Google TakeOut

So you want to download that original video of your cat that you uploaded to YouTube? You no longer have to take the help of numerous YouTube video downloaders available. The good news is that you can now do so 'officially' with the help of Google TakeOut. Google's Data Liberation Blog announced the expansion of the menu in TakeOut to include your original YouTube videos.



Until now, those who've uploaded their videos could download the transcoded videos (optimised for streaming on desktops, mobiles and tablets) via the video manager functionality. All it takes just a few clicks to download your YouTube video in its original format. No transcoding or transformation would be applied and you'll get your videos just in the same format as you uploaded them. All you need to do is visit: #-Link-Snipped-# and login with your Google account credentials. Once you're logged in, select the service which you want to download from - you'll notice YouTube at the bottom of the listed services. Let the service calculate the total size of the archive and then present you with the download option.

The Google TakeOut service is a part of the '#-Link-Snipped-#' (DL) initiative which is aimed at allowing users to easily move their own data in and out of Google's services. The DL front is a team of engineers that ensures the data portability and ease of doing it. The service is offered free of cost to all Google users.

We congratulate & thank the DL engineering team for adding YouTube to the service. We hope all the leading social networking websites will follow the example set by Google. Facebook, especially makes it a little difficult for the data to be taken out of their services. We'd love to hear from our users about their opinion on this development.

Via: #-Link-Snipped-#