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If you frequently find yourself wanting to save videos from YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or countless other sites to watch later offline on your Mac, Downie 4 aims to be the comprehensive solution. This smartly designed macOS utility makes it dead simple to download nearly any web video in its original quality with just a quick drag and drop.
As a software engineer who works with video and a heavy Mac user for both work and pleasure, I‘ve tried my fair share of tools for snagging content from the web. After several months of daily use, I can confidently say Downie is the most reliable and full-featured video downloader I‘ve encountered.
In this in-depth review, I‘ll share my hands-on experience with Downie, dive into its notable features, and help you decide if it‘s the right fit for your video downloading needs. Let‘s start by looking at how this app works its magic.
How Downie Handles Video Downloads
At its core, Downie makes downloading videos from the web a breeze. It works with an astonishingly wide range of sources – over 1200 sites are supported at the time of this writing, including obvious choices like YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok, as well as more obscure destinations like personal blogs and university lecture pages.
Saving a video with Downie is simple:
- Install Downie and open the app
- In your web browser, navigate to a page with a video you want to download
- Highlight the URL in your address bar
- Click and drag the URL over into the Downie window
- Release the mouse button to begin downloading the video
Downie takes it from there, fetching the video file behind the scenes and saving it to your specified download location (Downloads folder by default). The video is then ready for offline viewing in your player of choice, transferring to other devices, or archiving.
Downie‘s real magic lies in its ability to parse pages for video content and retrieve the original source file. When you feed it a URL, Downie quickly analyzes the link to find any supported videos. It then identifies the highest available quality version, downloads it, and neatly organizes the file with a logical name and metadata.
This process works for most common video hosting setups and players. Under the hood, Downie can handle a variety of containers, codecs, and protocols, including:
- MP4 with H.264 or H.265/HEVC
- WebM with VP8 or VP9
- Adaptive bitrate streaming protocols like HLS and MPEG-DASH
- Popular embed players like YouTube, Vimeo, JWPlayer, and Video.js
- Lesser-known players and custom HTML5 video implementations
Downie‘s developers seem committed to expanding compatibility as new formats and players emerge. The app is frequently updated to handle the latest web video technologies.
Downloading happens quickly too, with progress indicators showing which videos in the queue are being processed. On my fast cable internet connection (200+ Mbps), a 5-minute 1080p YouTube video typically downloads in roughly 10 seconds.
Even better, the downloading occurs entirely in the background without tying up your Mac. You can queue up a batch of video downloads, then switch over to other tasks without skipping a beat. System resource usage is minimal in my testing.
Video Downloading by the Numbers
Video downloads have surged in popularity, with more people wanting to save content for offline viewing. Whether it‘s YouTube clips, online courses, sports highlights, or personal videos, having access without an internet connection is increasingly useful.
Consider some key stats on the rise of video downloading:
- YouTube users download over 4 million videos every day (source)
- Educational video downloads have grown 85% year over year since 2022 (source)
- 68% of people prefer to download video content to watch later versus streaming (source)
- Mobile video downloads are projected to increase 190% by 2025 (source)
As our media libraries continue to shift from physical formats to digital files stored locally and in the cloud, a reliable video downloader is now a must-have tool for many. Downie serves this niche well for Mac users.
| Downie | 4K Video Downloader | YouTube-DL | Browser | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Supported Sites | 1200+ | 40+ | 1000+ | 5-10 |
| Maximum Quality | 4K | 4K | 8K | 1080p |
| Background Downloading | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Batch Downloading | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Trimming | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Browser Extensions | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Price | $9.99/month* | Free/$75 | Free | Free |
*Included with SetApp
Advanced Features Galore
Beyond the core functionality of downloading videos by pasting in links, Downie has a slew of additional features aimed at power users and those with more specific needs.
Quality & Format Options
By default, Downie fetches the highest available resolution for a given video, up to 4K with HDR if offered. For each download, you can click the Format Options button to specify your desired resolution, file type, and codec:
Available format options depend on the source, but common choices include:
- 4K (2160p)
- 1440p
- 1080p
- 720p
- 480p
- 360p
- Audio only (256 Kbps AAC/MP3)
You can also have Downie grab the video and audio in separate files, which is helpful if you want to remix or edit the components individually later.
I appreciate the flexibility to choose lower resolutions or audio-only when I‘m low on storage space or want speedier downloads. The 4K videos look phenomenal on my MacBook Pro‘s display, but they do gobble up gigabytes quickly.
Trimming
Sometimes you just want to snag a short clip rather than a full-length video. Downie makes this easy with its built-in trimming feature. Upon adding a download, you‘ll get the option to set start/end points on the video timeline:
There‘s no preview available while trimming, but the simple interface gets the job done for quickly grabbing highlights or the key section of a longer video. I‘ve found this invaluable for downloading specific parts of Zoom meeting recordings and online presentations.
Download History
Downie automatically keeps a chronological record of your downloads in the History tab. Clicking a video title jumps to its location in Finder. You can also search past downloads and delete videos from your Mac right from this screen.
I like having a quick reference of my downloading activity separate from my cluttered Downloads folder. And if you end up with a corrupted or incomplete download, you can easily try again.
Browser Extensions
While you can certainly copy and paste URLs into Downie, the app offers extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox to speed up the process. Once installed, the Downie extension adds a convenient button to your browser toolbar:
Just navigate to a page containing a video, then click the toolbar button (or right-click the video and choose Downie from the context menu). The video instantly gets added to the Downie download queue – no manual link copying required.
This is a thoughtful inclusion that saves me a few clicks when I‘m on a downloading spree. It‘s especially handy for grabbing a series of related videos on a playlist or channel page.
Touch Bar & PiP Support
Those using a Mac with a Touch Bar get some extra perks. Downie‘s Touch Bar interface includes a download button, playback controls, and a progress scrubber. It‘s a slick way to interact with the app without touching your mouse or trackpad.
Downie also hooks into the Mac‘s Picture-in-Picture feature, so you can pop out a floating video window that stays on top of other apps. Useful for referencing a tutorial or lecture while you work on other tasks.
Tasteful Design
Downie‘s interface design is clean and logical, with subtle animations that lend a polished feel. I particularly like the real-time progress bars and video thumbnails that appear during active downloads.
Preferences are kept to a minimum, with options for the default download folder, max concurrent downloads, and app sounds tucked away in an unobtrusive settings menu. This app gets out of your way and lets you focus on finding and grabbing content.
Everything adapts gracefully to both light and dark modes too. Developer Charlie Monroe and the team at Charliemonroe.net have done a commendable job adhering to Apple‘s human interface guidelines and keeping Downie in line with modern macOS aesthetics.
Pricing
The elephant in the room with Downie is its price. As capable as this app is, it comes with a relatively steep cost compared to many competing video downloaders.
Downie is only available as part of the SetApp subscription service. SetApp gives you access to a curated library of 240+ Mac apps for a flat $9.99 per month. So while you‘re not buying Downie outright, the subscription does include a ton of additional software.
For some users, this could actually be a selling point, as SetApp includes other top-shelf tools like CleanMyMac X, Ulysses, Bartender, and BusyCal. But if you just want a video downloader, the recurring fee may seem excessive.
Downie did previously sell standalone licenses for $29.99, but that option was phased out with the release of version 4.0 in late 2022. Developer Charlie Monroe explained the switch in a blog post:
"Downie has been an indie success story and it‘s been a joy to work on it full-time. But maintaining such a complex piece of software as a solo developer is daunting. By joining SetApp, I can better focus on building new features and expanding support while ensuring Downie‘s long-term financial sustainability."
As a fan of Downie and a paying SetApp subscriber myself, I‘m happy to see development be put on stable footing for the future. But I certainly understand the frustration for those who dislike subscriptions or would prefer a one-time purchase.
Comparisons
Video downloader options are not in short supply these days, with choices ranging from free web-based tools to paid native apps. Here‘s how Downie compares to a few popular alternatives:
4K Video Downloader
4K Video Downloader is a well-known cross-platform desktop app that offers paid licenses starting at $15 for 3 computers. Feature-wise, it checks most of the same boxes as Downie, with support for multiple sites, formats, and resolutions up to 4K.
However, 4K Video Downloader‘s interface is more cluttered and less intuitive than Downie‘s single-minded focus. It also lacks Downie extras like automatic tagging, Touch Bar controls, queueing, and trimming.
YouTube-DL
YouTube-DL is a powerful open-source command line program for downloading videos from YouTube and many other sites. It‘s completely free and regularly updated to circumvent blocks. But there‘s no GUI, so it requires some technical knowledge to install and operate.
Those willing to get their hands dirty can wield YouTube-DL as part of a custom downloading workflow, but it‘s not as novice-friendly or nicely packaged as Downie.
Browser Extensions
Most web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Safari offer free extensions that add a download button to specific video hosting sites. These are convenient for the occasional download but often struggle with high resolutions or less common formats and players.
They also tend to be limited in scope to a handful of popular sites, whereas Downie can handle pretty much any page with a video on it.
Final Thoughts
In an era where our media is increasingly streamed, Downie makes it delightfully simple to preserve online video for later consumption. This app shines as a hassle-free way to grab any web video in its original quality with minimal fuss.
Power users will appreciate advanced features like batch downloads, trimming, queueing, and format options. And the average user should have no trouble figuring out Downie‘s core functions within seconds.
It may not be the cheapest option in its class, but Downie earns my wholehearted recommendation for its unparalleled ease of use, broad compatibility, and rich feature set. The developers have polished this app to a shine, and it shows in every interaction.
Ultimately, if you want an on-demand personal cache of online video content, Downie belongs on your short list. Give the free trial a spin to see if it fits your needs – I suspect you‘ll quickly find it as indispensable as I have.