I was looking recently to see if the program “youtube-dl” could be used on an Android phone or tablet. Despite its name it is a command-line tool (there are Linux and Windows variants as well as several third party desktop GUIs) that allows downloads from multiple sites (hundreds probably thousands). As the name implies, these include YouTube, but also BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, Daily Motion and many others. In the case of BBC there is no expiry on the downloaded content, and on ITV there is no expiry and more importantly no charge (I think ITV charge about £4 pcm for the download feature).
Main reason was to be able to download stuff on to the phone/tablet for watching offline (e.g. on a plane or train) – especially when the broadcaster’s version may have expired. Long and short of it, it is possible using Termux – a Linux emulator for Android.
Specifically for youtube-dl there is a very good tutorial here – you don’t need to do all of it, but the update checks are useful as is the enabling of the Android folders (downloads, movies etc). I couldn’t get the “set default output folder” to work, but it is easy to move the downloads (which by default appear in the location you run Termux from).
However, as fiddly as it is, it seems to be a pretty capable linux emulator and many other programs can be run from the command prompt, including ffmpeg ( a video/audio conversion and editing utility which is installed along with pip if you follow the youtube-dl guide above).
This is more a bit of fun than anything else, as its probably easier to download what you want to a laptop and transfer to your phone, but I don’t remember seeing it mentioned on here or MM and its pretty good.
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