YouTubeFisher

YouTubeFisher is a tiny software utility made to download YouTube clips. It can preserve the original format or extract the audio track and save it as MP3, in case you want to prepare a music collection for a portable player.

As long as you have .NET Framework installed on the PC, you don't have to set up anything else. You can drop YouTubeFisher's executable file in any part of the hard drive and just click it to launch the tool, as well as copy it to a pen drive or other removable storage unit, in order to immediately run it on any PC. Unlike most installers, it doesn't modify Windows registry settings or create extra files on the disk without your permission.

The interface is represented by a very small window that shows all available options. All you have to do is type or paste a YouTube link (HTTP and HTTPS are supported), specify the output directory and format, and start the downloading procedure with the click of a button.

If there are multiple streams available on YouTube, then you can select the preferred level of video quality for downloading. For example, you can save the clips as HD 720p or standard YouTube quality (.mp4), WebM 360p (.webm), LQ Flash MP3.22KHz (.flv), or mobile small or x-small (.3gp). The audio extraction option is separately accessible.

Apart from the fact that the app contains a button for pasting text from Clipboard into the YouTube video URL box, there are no other notable options available.

Downloading jobs were carried out surprisingly fast during our tests while CPU and RAM consumption remained minimal, and tracks had quality audio after extraction. We haven't found any difficulties in our tests, since the tool didn't hang, crash or show error dialogs.

Although it may seem rudimentary and overly simplistic, YouTubeFisher does its job quite well, supplying users with a fast, efficient and uncomplicated method for downloading YouTube clips and extracting audio.