YouTube: Difference between revisions

The YouTube Mobile application permits users with a YouTube Premium subscription to download videos for offline viewing. However, the downloaded content is protected by [[Digital rights management|Digital Rights Management]] (DRM) that requires the application to establish an online connection with YouTube's servers at least once every 48 hours to maintain playback functionality. This requirement is not prominently featured on the primary YouTube Premium marketing page and is detailed instead within the platform's support documentation.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web |author= |date= |title=YouTube Premium |url=https://www.youtube.com/premium |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251111004845/https://www.youtube.com/premium |archive-date=11 Nov 2025 |access-date=2 Feb 2026 |website=YouTube}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |author= |title=Watch videos offline on mobile in selected countries and regions |url=https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6141269 |website=[[Google]] |date=13 Jul 2025 |access-date=11 Feb 2026 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250719175650/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6141269 |archive-date=19 Jul 2025}}</ref>  

In June 2023, YouTube forced Matt Wright, maintainer of the YouTube Metadata tool, to remove the exporting feature which let people export YouTube metadata such as video descriptions into a file. This did not include the videos themselves. It can be assumed that this is the "tip of an iceberg" and YouTube made many such requests without them being publicly documented.<ref>[https://github.com/mattwright324/youtube-metadata/discussions/150 Export Feature? · mattwright324/youtube-metadata · Discussion #150 · GitHub] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20251214094758/https://github.com/mattwright324/youtube-metadata/discussions/150 Archived])</ref>

Creating permanent local copies of videos is strongly discouraged by YouTube.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkojLslXg5M Vsauce Answers the 100 Most Googled Questions &#x7C; WIRED] (at 7:20 and 8:57) ([https://preservetube.com/watch?v=gkojLslXg5M Archived]).</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com:443/watch?v=IVPriyYwd-E How To Legally Download YouTube Videos] - Tim Schmoyer - Video Creators TV (clickbait - it is an advertisement for "YouTube Red", the earlier name of "YouTube Premium", and only shows the built-in "downloading" feature of YouTube Studio that lets channel owners download only their own uploaded videos) ([https://preservetube.com/watch?v=IVPriyYwd-E Archived]).</ref> YouTube is taking measures to prevent people from backing up videos locally. From a YouTube help center article:

 

<blockquote>

In order to protect the YouTube community, we may prevent signed-out users from accessing YouTube videos when they're attempting to download material for offline use.

<ref>[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3037019 Troubleshoot YouTube video errors - YouTube Help] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20260323195048/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3037019 Archived])</ref>

YouTube also regularly purges tutorial videos that show how to create local copies of videos.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120813001114/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkyqFiUrhTc How To Download Convert YouTube Videos 2 Anything] - ifxman (later removed by YouTube)</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20120713154012/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XLLOij1GSQ How to download youtube videos without any software] - Ritace40 (later removed by YouTube)</ref><ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20121003225255/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xf6uukCHmk Download Youtube Videos Free -- No Software!] - MKBHD (later removed by YouTube)</ref>

Instead, YouTube wants its users to pay monthly for its subscription service, YouTube Premium, to have any form of offline access to videos. YouTube Premium comes with a "download" feature, however, it is useless for long-term archival of videos given that it only lets users store temporary local copies of YouTube videos that are forcibly deleted after 29 days. In addition, to thwart any permanent preservation, the videos are stored with [[Data_lock-in#Videos_downloaded_inside_the_YouTube_app|data lock-in]] and proprietary encoding in a format only recognized by the YouTube app, to prevent local copying.<ref>[https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/L1S0SiBuJN8 Google is Locking Down Android - Mental Outlaw], 06:41</ref><ref>[https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7381437 YouTube videos offline FAQs - YouTube Help] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20260207132551/https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7381437 Archived])</ref><ref name="VirtualCuriosities">[https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/3383/warning-youtube-premium-downloads-arent-mp4-files Warning: Youtube Premium "Downloads" aren't MP4 Files - Virtual Curiosities] ([http://web.archive.org/web/20251126100053/https://www.virtualcuriosities.com/articles/3383/warning-youtube-premium-downloads-arent-mp4-files Archived])</ref><ref>[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/whats-wrong-with-youtube.html What's Wrong with YouTube - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20260216041246/https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/whats-wrong-with-youtube.html Archived])</ref><ref>[https://old.reddit.com/r/cobalt_tools/comments/1lhmlqx/youtube_downloads_not_working_megathread/ YouTube downloads not working - Megathread] - /r/cobalt_tools - Reddit ([https://web.archive.org/web/20260322015608/https://old.reddit.com/r/cobalt_tools/comments/1lhmlqx/youtube_downloads_not_working_megathread/ Archived]).</ref>

<blockquote>

Whenever I tell people that we need to plan for the day when YouTube goes offline, I mostly receive weird reactions. It seems to be the case that people can't think of YouTube being gone. Unfortunately, I'm convinced that most people will face the day when we lose this enormous library of videos.

- Karl Voit<ref>[https://karl-voit.at/cloud-dependencies/ My Dependencies on the Cloud] - Karl Voit ([https://web.archive.org/web/20260216041319/https://karl-voit.at/cloud-dependencies/ Archived])</ref>

Videos can disappear from YouTube for a variety of reasons. In fact, less than half of the videos that were publicly available on YouTube as of 2010 were still available as of 2021, according to a long-time study from a sample of 105 million videos.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://datahorde.org/youtube-was-made-for-reuploads/ |title=YouTube was made for Reuploads – Data Horde |date=28 July 2021 |url-status=live |access-date=12 April 2026 }}</ref> Sometimes, channel owners decide to "move on" and delete (or otherwise unpublish) their entire history of uploads. Sometimes, videos contain something Google doesn't like and they take them down, one example being "Android is losing a big feature" by comedian Sam Tucker (SAMTIME).<ref>[https://preservetube.com/watch?v=dfccCB2Vz-M Android is losing a big feature] by SAMTIME, Archived from the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfccCB2Vz-M Original YouTube] - video removed for unspecified violations.</ref>  

Sometimes, YouTube's community guidelines grow stricter, retroactively outruling existing content, and entire channels are taken down due to strikes on only a few videos, resulting in the collateral loss of all other videos, one famous example being Mumkey Jones.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te8-ETSDgcs Mumkey Jones: YouTube's Most Wanted] - j aubrey ([https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/Te8-ETSDgcs Archived])</ref>