Greyed-out "download" Button On Some Youtube Videos

When I look at youtube videos, some of them do not have a "download" button, or the "download" button is greyed out. Other videos do have a "download" button. Is this something that the creator of the video does or something that youtube does/

 

If it's copyright protected you probably can't download it (from Youtube).

 

Well, last night the download buttons worked on most of the YT videos that I couldn't download earlier.

I have 2 ways to download: Video DownloadHelper (never know when it's gonna work or not), and Easy Youtube Video Downloader Express (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't).

When I was having the problem, both downloaders would immediately present a little orange triangle on top of the "Display the progress of ongoing downloads" icon.

Go figger...

 

Video DownloadHelper has been buggy for years especially with Google Chrome so you might try another browser.

Chrome will often block video downloads from Youtube because Google is restrictive about downloading content and is specifically restrictive about downloading from Youtube. Google takes their copyright restrictions overboard and has shown no signs of trying to fix it.

 

I also think it matter if you're logged in to a Google account. There are programs that will download videos for you, JDownloader2 & Open Video Downloader
With jdownloader make sure that clipboard monitoring is on and copy the URL from the address bar & it will parse the site for a video and offer to download associated video(s).

 

For an online option https://320yt.com/en111/ or https://320yt.com/en111/youtube-to-mp4 has worked well for me but I don't do a lot of downloading/converting these days so I'm not the best source of info.

 

I appreciate all of you and your tips. I'm copying the links that you've sent and will try them out the next time I can't download from Youtube.

I don't normally log into Google, but I maybe at the time of the problem I was, because I was also fiddling around with my Pixel phone. I don't remember if I was logged in via the phone when I had the download problem. It's something for me to keep an eye on. Also, I don't use Chrome.

Thanks again for all your help!