Support for MP4 Downloader has been discontinued.
I don't have the time anymore to keep up with all the breaking changes that Mozilla is
making in add-on development for Firefox, in addition to reacting to changes in YouTube,
Dailymotion, and Vimeo that affect video downloading. Since Mozilla dropped support for
traditional add-ons in November 2017, MP4 Downloader has stopped working entirely in new
versions of Firefox.
The codebase has been left in the middle of a complete rewrite (see the Source Code section
of the Development page), although this rewrite
is not anywhere close to what is required to support new versions of Firefox. That codebase,
and this website, are left here for archival purposes.
To all MP4 Downloader fans, thanks for many years of support.
--Jake Hartz
Welcome to MP4 Downloader!
This add-on was originally created to download MP4 videos (compatible with the iPod) from YouTube. Since then, MP4 Downloader’s downloading ability has expanded to include other sites (see below). Additionally, this add-on optionally supports downloading high-quality videos from supported sites that offer them.
A few things to understand:
- MP4 Downloader supports YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo (the “supported sites”). Any mention of a “supported video” means a video hosted on one of these sites.
- A “video page” is a web page on one of the supported sites that plays a video.
- An “embedded video” is a video from one of the supported sites that is embedded inside a different web page that is not actually part of the supported site (have you ever seen a YouTube video embedded inside a web page that was definitely not YouTube? As an example, this page has many YouTube videos embedded inside the article).
There are a few ways to download videos:
- Use the toolbar button
- The MP4 Downloader toolbar button should be on your toolbar. (You can move or hide it by right-clicking on the button and selecting Customize.) Click the toolbar button while on any video page (including a YouTube user channel in addition to normal YouTube video pages) to download the video.
- Use the context menu
- You can use the context menu (the menu that appears when you right-click on a web page) to download videos. Just right-click on a supported video page and select Download Video as MP4. (NOTE: Due to a limitation in Adobe Flash, you can't right-click on the actual video - just right-click on the space around the video.)
- Use the button embedded inside a video page
- By default, a download button is automatically embedded inside the video page of any supported video. Just click this button to download the video! (If you cannot find the button, look for a "Download" button below the video on YouTube and Dailymotion or a "Download Video as MP4" button below the video on Vimeo.)
- Use the download button placed below embedded videos in web pages
- MP4 Downloader has an amazing feature that enables you to download YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo videos that are embedded inside web pages. Just visit a web page with a supported video embedded inside it and click the Download Video as MP4 button below the video. If you see an embedded video that doesn't have a Download Video as MP4 button below it, try clicking the MP4 Downloader toolbar button to re-check for embedded videos.
- Use the context menu of links pointing to video pages
- If you find a link to a video page on a supported site that contains a video you want to download, just right-click on the link and select Download Link as MP4.
Also, MP4 Downloader allows you to customize other options in the options dialog. More details on configuring MP4 Downloader can be found here.
Thanks for installing MP4 Downloader. If you find any bugs or have any questions, please contact us.