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Kyreer's avatar
Kyreer
Brass Contributor
May 27, 2026

Question about youtube music download on Windows 11

Hi all, New to Windows 11 and has a dumb question. I have an active youtube premium subscription. How can I save a local copy of youtube music on my computer? I don't find a way to this. I tried a ...
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Freyans's avatar
Freyans
Copper Contributor
May 27, 2026

When you use the subscription privileges of YouTube's premium services to download music through the official music application, the files downloaded are not the regular music files that you can access or move. YouTube Music stores the downloaded content in an encrypted and digitally rights-managed format, and only the YouTube Music application can play these files. 

About the YouTube music download. ytpdl can be used to cache the audio in playlists for offline listening. You can run it via the command line, and it will directly generate MP 3 files on your computer.

How to use it for YouTube music download:

- Ensure you have Node,js installed on your computer

- Run: npm install - g ytpdl

- Run: ytpdl <playlist_ id> --filter audio --quality highestaudio