How to Download a YouTube Playlist (MP4 or MP3, Up to 500 Videos)

Downloading one YouTube video is easy. Downloading a course with sixty lectures, a two-hundred-track music playlist, or your own channel's uploads one link at a time is not. A playlist downloader solves that by reading the whole list from one URL and giving you a download button for every entry. This guide explains how to grab the right link, how to save a playlist as video or audio, what the limits are, and how to keep a hundred files from turning into chaos in your Downloads folder.

Quick answer

1. Open the playlist on YouTube and copy its link. The URL should contain list=, for example youtube.com/playlist?list=PL....
2. Paste it into the YouTube playlist downloader. Y-Download lists up to 500 videos with their titles and durations.
3. Next to each video, choose MP4 for video or MP3 for audio. Each file is prepared with live progress and saved with the video's title as its filename.
4. If your browser asks whether the site may download multiple files, click Allow.

There is no single ZIP download yet; downloads happen per video, which also means you can pick only the entries you want.

Getting the right link

YouTube uses several kinds of URLs, and only some of them identify a playlist.

• Playlist page: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxx. This is the one to copy. Open the playlist from a channel's Playlists tab or from the sidebar, then copy the address bar or use Share → Copy link on the playlist page.
• Video inside a playlist: youtube.com/watch?v=xxxx&list=PLxxxx. This link points at one video with the playlist attached. To be sure you get the whole list, click the playlist title in the side panel to reach the playlist page, then copy that.
• Mixes and radio: URLs whose list= value starts with RD are generated for you personally and change constantly, so they generally cannot be listed by any downloader.
• Watch Later and Liked videos: these are private lists tied to your account and cannot be read by third-party tools. Create a normal public playlist and add the videos if you want to download them in bulk.

Y-Download works with public playlists. Private playlists cannot be listed because YouTube does not expose them.

Saving a playlist as MP3

Music playlists, albums, DJ sets, and lecture series are the most common reasons to download a playlist as audio.

1. Paste the playlist link and wait for the list to load.
2. Choose MP3 next to each track. Y-Download converts from YouTube's best audio stream at 320 kbps, embeds the title and artist tags, and adds square cover art, so the result looks like a proper album in any music app.
3. Save everything into one folder named after the playlist.

The YouTube to MP3 converter page explains bitrates in more detail. Playlists and albums from YouTube Music work the same way; the YouTube Music downloader accepts music.youtube.com links directly.

One practical note: filenames are the video titles, so the files sort alphabetically, not in playlist order. If order matters, build a playlist in your music app after importing, or add numbers to the filenames.

Saving a playlist as MP4

Choose MP4 next to each video, then the quality you want. Up to 1080p, Y-Download prefers H.264 with AAC audio for the widest compatibility; above that, YouTube provides only VP9 or AV1, which are kept as-is. Sizes add up quickly with playlists: fifty 1080p lectures of twenty minutes each can run to 20 GB or more, while the same course at 720p is roughly half that. The estimated size shown next to each option helps you decide, and our video quality guide explains what the labels mean.

Limits to know about

• 500 videos are listed per playlist. For longer playlists, only the first 500 appear.
• Four hours per video and 4 GB per file. Very long recordings inside a playlist cannot be downloaded from the list.
• Private, members-only, and age-restricted videos inside a playlist cannot be downloaded, and live streams work only once they have ended. The rest of the playlist is unaffected.
• Deleted or hidden entries show up on YouTube as "[Deleted video]" or "[Private video]" and simply have nothing to download.
• Prepared files are removed from the server after 30 minutes, so download each file when it is ready rather than preparing thirty at once and coming back later.

Keeping the files organized

• Use a folder per playlist. Set your browser to ask where to save files (Chrome: Settings → Downloads → "Ask where to save each file before downloading"), or move the files afterward.
• Work in batches. Start a handful of downloads, let them finish, then continue. Browsers handle parallel downloads fine, but your connection is the bottleneck, and a tidy queue is easier to check for failures.
• Desktop is more comfortable for large playlists. Safari on iPhone asks for confirmation on every file and Android puts everything in one Downloads folder, so for anything over a dozen videos a computer is easier. Files can be moved to a phone afterward.
• Check the count. Compare the number of files in your folder with the number of entries in the list before you delete anything or move on.

Troubleshooting

• The playlist cannot be found. It is private, was deleted, or is an auto-generated Mix. Ask the owner to make it public.
• Some videos are missing from the list. They are private, deleted, or beyond the 500-video limit.
• One download fails while others work. That video is probably age-restricted, members-only, longer than four hours, or currently live. Retry once; if it fails again, the video itself is the reason.
• The browser blocked the second download. Look for a "download multiple files" prompt or a blocked-download icon in the address bar and allow it for y-download.com.
• Files are out of order. Filenames are titles; see the note on ordering above.

Playlists of your own uploads, course materials shared with permission, and Creative Commons collections are exactly what this feature is for. For anything else, respect the creators' rights and YouTube's terms.