5 Free Ways to Download YouTube Video 1080p or Higher Quality

Updated Apr 27,2020 | by Thea

Over the years, due to YouTube’s restrictions, it’s a little bit difficult to get YouTube videos download. Thus, lots of apps, online tools and methods try to make the task easy. But, some of them were stroked down quickly. It’s not easy to download YouTube videos, let alone to download YouTube video 1080p, 4k or 8k.  

Fortunately, this article is going to show you 5 ways that can help you successfully download 1080p YouTube videos. We’ve tested them and they really work. Now, we are sharing them to you. No matter what operating system you use, you can get a workable way from this guide to download YouTube videos of 1080p online, and even higher 2k, 4K, 8K or 60fps, if available.

Although all of the methods we’re going to talk about work well for downloading 1080p YouTube videos, one thing to remind you is that some of them are totally free, while some of them are charged. Well, each has its advantages and disadvantages. You can try them out by yourself.

It is a free online tool to help you download YouTube videos in 1080p online. The process is simple. Now, check them out.

Step 1. Go to the page of the online YouTube video downloader.

Step 2. Paste the URL and click the Download button. Select 1080p then the download process will get started.

Step 3. After loading to 100%, you’ll see another download icon. Don’t click directly, just right click and select "Inspect".

Step 4. Then you’ll come to the following display. Find and click the download link. It will download the 1080p video in MP4 format.

Some iPhone users may know the shortcut feature since iOS 12. It’s an app called “Shortcuts”. If you don’t know exactly what it is, don’t worry. This method will show you how to get 1080p YouTube videos with your iPhone directly. But notice that, this method only works for iOS running on iOS 12 or later. Now, let’s see how to make it.

Step 1. In Apple store, search “shortcuts” and get the app.

Step 2. Search and play the video that you want to download in Safari. Then, access to the share sheet.

Step 3. Find and tap "Shortcuts". If you don't see the option, tap "More" and enable Shortcuts from the list.

Step 4. Tap "Download YouTube" from the Run Shortcut screen to begin the download process.

Step 5. Tap “Save to photo album”.

After that, you can access your Photos app and go to either "Camera Roll" or "Videos" album. You'll find the YouTube video there. Now, you can view and enjoy your downloaded YouTube video 1080p at any time.

You may probably know that YouTube saves audio and video separately for high-quality videos like 1080P, 2K, 4K, etc. So, you can try to download the audio and video separately, and then combine them manually. But this method has 2 restrictions for downloading 1080p YouTube videos:

1. You need a Firefox browser

2. Your computer screen should be at least of 1080p.

Step 1. Open Firefox browser and find the 1080p YouTube video you want to download.

Step 2. Right-click and select “Inspect Element”.

Step 3. Click on Network and then select Media. Then you’ll see only the HTTP requests made to media files, like audio and video files. To download YouTube video 1080p, find a link with "video/mp4" content type. Click the item on the left list, see whether the Content-Type is "video/mp4" or not in the right part of the screen. When you find it, just copy the URL on upper right “Request URL” column and paste the URL in a new address bar.

Step 4. In the new window, remove the range parameter in the query string and press Enter.

Step 5. When the video fully loaded, right-click and select "Save As" to download the private YouTube video. And then use the same method to download the audio to your computer.

Step 6. Using video and audio combine tool (like Camtasia) to merge them together, then you successfully download YouTube video 1080p.

Note: This YouTube video downloader is charged but allows you to freely use its all features within 24 hours without limit after first installing it.

Step 1. Download and install Airy software on your computer. It supports both PC and Mac.

Step 2. Run Airy on your Mac or PC.

Step 3. Paste the YouTube video’s URL to the app, then confirm the download info.

Step 4. You’ll be asked to choose where to save the downloaded videos. Select the destination and click the Download button.

After that, it will start to download YouTube video 1080p. The download process may take several minutes based on the size of the video.

Step 5. Open the destination folder you selected and you can see the 1080p YouTube video already be saved there.

The last way to download YouTube video 1080p is by using an unblocked YouTube video downloader. With this free online YouTube video downloader, you can automatically download videos in HD quality. Besides, it can also help you convert YouTube videos into up to 12 different formats like MP4, FLV, MKV, MP3, etc. Not only enables you to save videos to your computer easily, but also allows you to save downloaded videos to your iPhone, iPad directly. Yet, to make that, you need to switch from the online downloader to its all-in-one desktop application - IOTransfer, in which the unblocked YouTube video downloader is built. And, it provides more useful tools such as iOS transfer, phone cleaner, Instagram downloader, iCloud photo manager, etc.

That’s all for how to download YouTube video 1080p. Each method is feasible and you can choose the one that suits your needs best. For online tool, you can try out Way 1 or Way 5; for mobile (only iOS), Way 2 is recommended; as for request on video downloading, video converting as well as save downloaded YouTube videos to iPhone iPad directly at the same time, IOTransfer is the best.

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