The best Downie alternatives for Mac

Downie, by Charlie Monroe Software, is a Mac app that downloads videos from YouTube, Vimeo and, its own site says, more than 1,000 other sites. Paste or drag in a link, or send one from its extension for Safari, Chrome or Firefox. It fetches the highest quality there is, up to 4K on YouTube, and can convert what it downloads to MP4 for an iPhone or iPad, or keep the audio only. On a site it doesn't know, its User-Guided Extraction opens the page in a built-in browser to find the video. Your download history syncs between your Macs through iCloud, and the site says updates come every week or two.

A permanent license is $19.99 from the developer, before VAT or sales tax, for up to 3 of your own Macs. It covers Downie 4; a new major version is a new license. It's also in Setapp's subscription. It isn't on the Mac App Store: the developer says Apple doesn't allow apps that download from YouTube there. Downie 4 needs macOS 13 or later, 15 recommended.

We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. Koi is first below because it's ours, but Koi is not a dedicated downloader, and we're precise about the difference. Every fact about another app comes from that app's own site or its Setapp page, checked October 28, 2026. And whichever you pick, download only what you have the right to.

• Downie is a whole app for downloading: browser extensions, a built-in browser for sites it doesn't know, conversion after the download, and history synced across your Macs.
• Koi's video downloader is one of the tools in your notch. Paste or drop a link, pick Video, No sound or Sound only and a size, and it's in your Downloads and the Files Tray.
• Koi is mostly other things: dictation in any app, call recording, documents, a calendar and an assistant you talk to. The downloader came along in Koi 2.1.

So if downloading is something you do all day, Downie is built for that. If you save a video now and then and already use Koi, you don't need another app.

With Downie:

1. Copy the video's link, or click Downie's button in your browser.
2. Paste or drag the link into Downie.
3. It downloads, and converts the file if you set it to.

With Koi:

1. Copy the video's link, hover the notch, open Tools and click Downloader.
2. Paste it in the field and press Return, or drop the link on the notch instead. Koi shows the video's picture, title and site.
3. Pick Video, No sound or Sound only, then a size from 4K down, each with about how big it'll be.
4. It's saved to Downloads under the video's title and put in the Files Tray.

On a call you can just say “download this video” or “just the sound”. Step by step: how to download a video on Mac.

Koi's downloader goes straight from your Mac to the site. The link and the video never pass through Koi's server, and Koi doesn't keep or count either; anonymous usage counts only that the button was pressed. A link you give Koi on a call is part of what you asked, so it goes to the AI like the rest of your question. More on the privacy page.

From each app's own site or Setapp page. “Not listed” means it doesn't say.

• Trimming, subtitles or playlists? Pulltube.
• Free, and you don't mind Terminal? yt-dlp.
• A video now and then, from the notch, in an app that also does your dictation, calls and notes? Koi.

To shrink, trim or convert what you downloaded, Koi's Shift wheel does it in one drag; see how to compress a video. For the sound as text, there's Transcribe. Plans are on the pricing page.