Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a reliable and safe YouTube music downloader. I want something that allows me to download songs in high-quality audio formats like MP3 or FLAC.

It should ideally be easy to use, work on both desktop and mobile, and not come with intrusive ads or malware. Bonus if it can handle playlists or batch downloads.

I’m also curious about the legality, are there any safe ways to download music from YouTube for personal use?

I’d love to hear your experiences and recommendations for trustworthy tools.

 

thanks in advance for any help

 

Free Youtube never give high quality audio, max quality you can get is 128 kbps.

You can get 256kbps with a premium account on youtube music, if you get a premium account then you can download file legally for a personnal use.

https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/9076559

https://support.google.com/youtubemusic/answer/6313535

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2025

https://jely2002.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/

 

If you want high quality, don't download from youtube.
Even if you get a flac file out of a download tool, it's just low quality packed in a high quality format.
Like that one guy from Poland who built himself a Porsche looking vehicle from old parts of cheap cars.
It wasn't a Porsche but it looked like one.

Get yourself this tool:
https://github.com/alexkay/spek

And test your audio files for their real quality.

Here's an example. This is an audio file in the flac format (converted from youtube).


And this is a real high quality audio file with the full specrtrum of sound (ripped from deezer).


As you can see, music converted from youtube (also soundcloud) lacks of everything above 15kHz.
This might not mean much when you only hear music on cheap headphones from your smartphone
but for any professional usage or if you want to take care of quality, it sucks.

Better get yourself a Deezer Hifi account and the tool Deemix-GUI (or Murglar on Android)
and download everything in top quality in the flac format.

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2025 at 9:32 PM

Asking for legality is kind of funny. If you mean does YT allow this? Obviously not. Is it legal in your country? Depends on where you live but probably not. In addition you want a free tool, without ads, that has a desktop and mobile version, that is also trustworthy. The only thing missing here is that it also pays you for using it.

 

r4e and Wuji are on point, so need to go further with those angles.

That said, here's your workhorse. And it's 100% legal. *tongue-firmly-in-cheek*

https://github.com/ErrorFlynn/ytdlp-interface?tab=readme-ov-file