How to Download a Whole YouTube Playlist (MP4 & MP3)

A 50-lecture course. A 30-track album playlist. A podcast's entire backlog. Downloading these one video link at a time is misery, and it's unnecessary. This guide shows how to download a whole YouTube playlist efficiently, which format to pick for which job, and the honest limits (Mixes, private playlists) that trip people up.

How it works

1. Copy the playlist link. Open the playlist on YouTube and copy the URL, it contains list=, like youtube.com/playlist?list=PL…. (A watch-page URL with &list= in it points at a single video; use the playlist page itself.)
2. Paste it into the YouTube playlist downloader. In a couple of seconds you'll see the playlist's title and every video listed with its thumbnail and duration, up to the first 100.
3. Pick your format once, MP4 for video (1080p to 360p) or MP3 for audio (320 to 64kbps), using the selector above the list.
4. Download the videos you want, one click each. Every file arrives as its own clean MP4 or MP3 with a live progress bar.

Bonus: this works on every tool page and the homepage, paste a playlist link anywhere on the site and the video list appears.

MP3 or MP4? Match the format to the playlist

Playlist type	Best format	Why
University course / lectures	MP3 128kbps	Speech is perfect at 128kbps; a whole semester fits in a few GB
Music / album playlist	MP3 320kbps	Maximum audio quality, tiny compared to video
Tutorials you need to watch	MP4 720p	Sharp enough on any screen at half the size of 1080p
Archive of your own uploads	MP4 1080p	Keep the best available copy

The size difference is dramatic: a 50-video lecture course is a few gigabytes as 128kbps audio versus tens of gigabytes as 1080p video.

The killer use case: your own channel

Every YouTube channel has an automatic "Uploads" playlist. Paste yours into the playlist downloader and you have the fastest possible way to back up your own channel, no Studio exports, no per-video clicking. Creators who lost originals to a dead drive do this quarterly.

What doesn't work (and why)

• YouTube Mixes (URLs starting with list=RD…). These "radio" playlists are generated per-viewer in real time; there is no fixed list to read.
• Private playlists. They need a login, and we never ask for yours. Unlisted playlists work fine.
• Deleted and private videos inside a playlist. They appear in the count but can't be fetched; downloading them fails individually while the rest work.
• Beyond 100 videos. The list shows the first 100 entries, which covers almost every real playlist.

Tips for big batches

• Do it on Wi-Fi and on desktop for anything above a handful of videos, steadier connection, no battery drain.
• Prefer 720p over 1080p when downloading many videos for phone viewing: visually identical on a small screen, half the data, and each download completes faster.
• Very long individual videos (multi-hour) inside a playlist behave like any long video, drop the quality a notch if one times out; the full cause list is in why downloads fail.

Is downloading playlists allowed?

The playlist wrapper changes nothing, the rules apply per video. Your own uploads, Creative Commons material, public domain content and anything with permission: fine. Commercial music you'd otherwise pay for: not fine. The complete picture is in our legality explainer. For single videos and more on audio quality, see the complete YouTube to MP3 guide.

This educational tool and guide are not affiliated with YouTube. Download only content you own, have permission for, or that is freely licensed.