Pre-load YouTube videos to watch offline

The YouTube application for Android has a “pre-load” function that downloads the last viewed videos online to the device cache and view them offline or no internet afterwards.

This download is done automatically every time the user plays a video (when they normally watch them online). That video, or even the latest recent videos, can be viewed later, even if the device has no Wi-Fi or mobile data connection. As the application already stores or caches them, all it does is take the information from this memory and not download it again from the internet.

This pre-load has its drawbacks. Navigation within the YouTube application always requires the Internet. This means that to view the preloaded videos offline be careful to leave the application on the screen of the video you want to see later. If it is a group of videos, you have to preload them in the desired sequence and leave the app in the last video of the group. To view them offline, the last video is played and then the return button is used to play the previous videos.

From what has been said before, it is evident that it is easy to lose access to preloaded videos if the Internet connection is completely lost. If you have an active mobile data plan, this is no longer a problem because the user can temporarily use the mobile data to locate the preloaded video and then disconnect the connection to ensure that it is played from the cache and the plan data is not used. .

You cannot configure the number of videos that can be cached or the minutes of video that can be downloaded. This is a question that should be tested on every Android device. What it is possible to see is the amount of cache that the YouTube application occupies to store the videos, in Settings > Applications > YouTube > Cache.

Cache used to store preloaded videos. YouTube v10.

How to actually download YouTube videos
The Android app Tubemate (tubemate.net) download YouTube videos to the internal or external storage of the device, to watch them offline at any time and with any video player. The difference here is that the user no longer has to pre-load the video but simply send it to download.