How to Download YouTube Video in 1080P

HowTos • Aug. 6, 2019

Everyone would agree that YouTube has become your central destination for entertainment. From the quick BuzzFeed videos to fully-fledged documentaries, you have almost everything. And, Google has been adding so many features to the platform as well.

But, do you know which highly-demanded feature is still absent in YouTube?

Well, you guessed it: YouTube video downloads. And, at this point, you don’t want anything less than 1080p either.

Up until this point, YouTube does not offer you an official way (at least on Mac and PC) to download YouTube videos in 1080p. At SweetBits, though, we don’t and cannot always wait for official ways, you know. So, we did something for you in here:

We have this quick tutorial on how to download YouTube video in 1080p. And, yes, we have different ways for different platforms as well. Just so you know, we are listing methods that can help you download videos in 1080p quality. We don’t cover anything else.

Download YouTube video in 1080p for iOS/Android with YouTube Premium

Let’s cover the obvious route first. You’re going on a trip and mobile data isn’t the most reliable one. So, for on-the-go entertainment, you need to store some YouTube videos on your phone. Given that you are using Android or iOS, you actually have an official way to download YouTube videos in 1080.

To use that, however, you have to pay a monthly subscription as well — YouTube Premium. As you probably know, YouTube Premium is the paid version of the video-sharing platform. Along with superb features like background playback and access to YouTube originals, you get offline downloads too.

Up until this point, YouTube had a maximum offline quality limit of 720p. Two days before, though, YouTube has brought 1080p downloads to the official iOS and Android apps. Don’t worry if you cannot download the video in 1080 now. YouTube is rolling out the feature slowly.

You have to follow the steps given below to download YouTube videos at 1080p quality in your Android or iOS device.

You have to open the video you want to download when you have a fast Internet connection. This is because 1080p videos are normally big in size.
Click on the Download button you see below the playback section.
From the pop-up menu, you can choose the desired download quality. That is, you choose 1080p.
Now, wait while YouTube downloads and stores the video on your device.

By the way, in some devices, you may have already set the preferred download quality. To change this, you have to go to Settings -> Background play & Downloads and choose 1080p as the desired quality. Onwards, however, everything you download will be stored in 1080p quality.

Didn’t we mention that you need to have YouTube Premium subscription for this?

The bigger problem here is that you cannot share this downloaded video. Also, you cannot play the video in other media players. On the bright side, you can play the video using the same control.

Download YouTube video in 1080p for PC/Mac with Airy

Now, we will talk about the method to download your favorite YouTube video on a Mac or PC.

Of course, there’s no official way. as there’s no official YouTube app for Windows or Mac.

So, we are using a third-party YouTube downloader — Airy.

Unlike many of the other YouTube downloaders, Airy supports 1080p downloads. And, Airy does not actually put junk into your computer either. Let’s have a look at how things work.

You have to download and install Airy on your Mac or PC
Now, open the program and you can paste the URL of the YouTube video that you want to download.
In a second or so, Airy would show you the available quality options. This actually depends on videos as well. For instance, if you cannot download a video in 1080 if it was shot in 720p.
Once you select the desired quality, click on the Download button.
You can see the progress as Airy downloads the video.

Apparently, this is the easiest method to download YouTube videos in 1080p. And, there are no restrictions when it comes to playback either. You will be able to share the videos with others and even play the content on other players.

There are some other cool features in Airy, but we will talk about it when we talk about the best YouTube downloaders out there.

Airy is a freemium YouTube downloader. You can download two videos for free, at any quality you want. To continue downloads after that, you have to pay as well. However, if you are someone who downloads a lot of YouTube videos for work, we think Airy is a nice option.

The bottom line

Apparently, these are the four different ways you can follow to download YouTube video in 1080p quality. It can be noted that we have covered separate methods for iOS/Android and PC/Mac. Of course, there are different apps out there, but we have chosen only the best ones.