Sure, streaming video has never been more accessible than these days, but you might still find yourself in situations where having a fast enough connection to stream a video is not possible. For people who like to take their entertainment with themselves, Downloading and keeping videos on their phones and computers have always been a good and reliable option. YouTube By Click is one of the most popular applications on Windows to let users download videos from the Internet. It is available in two versions: free and premium. I spent some time testing and using the premium version of the app and here is a complete YouTube By Click Review.

The app feels quite responsive in terms of launch timings. The UI consists of some toggles to let users switch between audio and video mode and select the download format for videos. Other toggles include a video quality switch and a button to choose the download directory on the PC. Below these toggles, you can see the files that are being downloaded, are downloaded or search results. Below that, you can find buttons for toggle search, find help and see application settings dialog box. The bottom right corner there is a toggle to stop automatically detecting videos.

At the bottom, you can find video recommendations, which are based on videos that you have downloaded. These recommendations quite handy especially when you are downloading music videos. Overall the UI is satisfactory, it could be improved further (for example, clicking on “YouTube By Click” should open the menu instead of taking me to the website), but it is easy to use and understand.

The app can download videos from a number of websites including YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Instagram, Dailymotion etc. and in my experience, all work fine. As the name suggests, most automated and advanced features of an app such as recommendations and playlist downloads are only for YouTube.

Once activated, the maximum resolution of video download was 4K (as long as the original upload was in 4K) and the download formats include 3GP. FLV, AVI, WebM, and MP4, the latter being the default one. YouTube By Click worked well with the Chrome browser that I use. There is no extension for Chrome that can be installed and this eliminates the possibility of having a direct download button within the player window. Instead, when playing a video a bubble shows up asking you if you want to download the video being played. You can copy the address of video and a popup is shown to offer you with the download options.

Playlist download works just as expected. And you can download private playlists by signing into YouTube from Options> Accounts and selecting Add Accounts under YouTube. YouTube By Click can also convert local videos to different Video or Audio formats which is a nice thing to have. One of the coolest features of YouTube By Click is that it can download all videos from a channel pretty much the same way it works for YouTube Playlists. You need to copy the URL of Channel and the app asks if you are interested in downloading the channel.

As we discussed in UI section, the application is easy to navigate with some room for improvement. Unlike some tempermoneky scripts, YouTube By Click does not offer any download button next to videos and you are required to copy the URL from either the address bar or from the right-click menu. At first, it feels like an unnecessary step, but considering that bubble notification appears when you are watching a video, it doesn’t hurt user experience much.

The app worked well for all supported sites and I found no notable bugs or performance drops when downloading more than 100 videos from playlists. One great feature I wish it had was automatically downloading new videos from subscribed YouTube channels as it would make it really easy for road warriors to stay updated with YouTube channels they subscribe to.

YouTube By Click is a good video downloading solution and it does what is promises without any complications. The app justifies the asking price in terms of available features and if you like keeping videos offline, it won’t disappoint you. Still, if you are a very casual user and you don’t need any of its advanced features, you might be better off with the free version or using other ways to download videos for offline use.