SMTube or SMPlayer YouTube Browser is a dedicated app that can be used to view or download videos from the YouTube platform. It has an interesting functionality that is not really exploited properly on the Linux platform.
There aren't many applications that choose to provide these features in a standalone app. There are ways of downloading YouTube videos, even if Google actively discourages it. For example, extensions that allow these features are not allowed in their official webstore. You can manually install some extensions from third-party developers, but that's not something that most people would do.
Some of the regular download apps you can find on the Linux platform have plugins that allow users to download YouTube videos or even come with this functionality by default, but it's not linked with anything else. On the other hand, the Windows OS is packed with this kind of apps, so it's not really a surprise that you also have a Linux alternative.
Installation
I tested SMPlayer YouTube Browser in Ubuntu 15.04, and the installation went just fine, but it's worth pointing out that the version that can be found in the official repositories is older. So, if you want the latest version, you will need to add a PPA. Adding a PPA to the system is pretty easy, and it can be done with just a few commands in the terminal. Open a terminal and enter the following commands (you will have to be root):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smtube
Usage
The main window of the application is pretty straight forward and has three tabs or distinct categories, Most Popular, Music, and Sports, where users can find the most popular videos at that time on YouTube. It's not really useful unless you just want to hang out and see what other people are finding interesting.
There are very few settings available for the application, and they are accessible from the bottom by pressing the button with the small wrench. Users can change a few options from there, like the preferred quality for the videos, for both downloading and viewing. Most interesting is that you can also choose what player to use.
I had Totem, VLC, and Mplayer installed, but my guess is that any player supporting URLs will show up in that list. Double-clicking any video in the main window will open it in your video player of choice, but from my experience Mplayer was the smoothest and the fastest.
It's also possible to change the default feeds for SMPlayer YouTube Browser. By default, it has selected United States and the daytime period, but there is a long list of supported countries.
Downloading videos is a simple process, just enter the URL and press OK. Depending on the size and quality of the selected video, not to mention your internet connection, it should be a rather fast process.
The Good
The Bad
It's also worth pointing out that the application doesn't seem to change the content if you modify the timeframe for the videos. The last thing on this list is a short video shown on top of it, probably from YouTube, that says the platform used to connect to the service is not recognized.