The Y2mate Alternative That Runs on Your Machine
Paste a video link and keep the file, saved as a clean MP4 or MP3 on your Mac or PC. Vidferry does what y2mate did, on your own machine, with no ads and nothing uploaded.
- MP4 video, up to 4K
- MP3 or M4A audio
- Playlists and channels
- 1,000+ sites
Built by the team behind Hoverify, trusted by 22,000+ developers
Everything y2mate did, without the ads.
One paste, and it’s yours, at the quality and format you want.
No ads, no fake buttons
y2mate buried the real download under fake buttons, pop-ups, and notification prompts. Vidferry is a plain app: one paste, one file, and nothing trying to trick you into a wrong click.
Private, and on your machine
A website has to send your link to its own server to fetch the video. Vidferry does the work locally, so the links you paste and the files you save never leave your computer.
Full quality, no paywall
Those sites capped you at a low resolution and dangled 'HD' behind an upgrade. Vidferry just saves the best the source actually has, up to 4K, at no extra charge.
Far more than YouTube
y2mate was really a YouTube tool. Vidferry pulls video and audio from more than a thousand sites, so one app covers YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and the rest.
What happened to y2mate, and why the “y2mate” sites still around are clones
For years, y2mate was the reflex: paste a YouTube link, get an MP3 or MP4, close the three tabs that opened themselves. That reflex stopped working in October 2025. The IFPI, the recorded-music industry’s trade body, shut down y2mate.com and eleven other stream-ripping sites in an enforcement action in Vietnam, and the domains passed into the industry’s hands. The sites had pulled in more than 620 million visits in the year before, so this wasn’t a quiet retirement. It was a deliberate takedown of one of the most-used piracy tools on the web.
What confuses people is that typing “y2mate” into a search bar still turns up results. Those aren’t the original. They’re copycats on different domains, trading on a name that still gets millions of searches a month. With no reputation left to lose, they lean into the worst ad networks, and some go further and hide malware in their fake download pages. If you want the whole story, we wrote up the full account separately. The short version: the y2mate you remember is gone, and the ones wearing its name now are worse.
Why the replacement should be an app, not the next website
The temptation is to find “the new y2mate,” another website that does the same paste-and-download trick. That just restarts the same clock. A free download site has to pay for itself somehow, and the way it does that is advertising, the aggressive kind: fake buttons, pop-ups, redirects, and prompts begging to send you notifications. That model is exactly what got y2mate flagged for adware in the first place, and a new site with the same business plan lands in the same place.
There’s a quieter cost too. Any download website has to fetch your link on its own server, which means a stranger’s machine sees every URL you paste and where it came from. An app on your own computer never exposes that. Move the job off the web and onto your machine and both problems disappear at once: nothing to advertise at you, and no server logging your links. That’s the actual upgrade, not a prettier website.
What Vidferry does day to day
Vidferry is a small desktop app for Mac and PC. You paste a link, pick MP4 for video or MP3 for audio, choose a quality, and the file saves straight to a folder you pick. Playlists and channels queue up in one go, so you’re not feeding it links one at a time. It reaches more than a thousand sites, not just YouTube, which covers TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and the rest without swapping tools. Nothing gets uploaded to a server we run, there’s no account to make, and it updates itself in the background so it keeps working as sites change. It’s $12 once, for both Mac and Windows, with no subscription and no ads, because the purchase is how it makes its money. That’s the whole trade: pay a little, once, and the transaction never leaves your computer.
How to download videos without y2mate
Three steps, about a minute. No setup, no sign-up.
- 1
Copy the video link
Grab the URL from the address bar or the share button. A single video or a whole playlist both work.
- 2
Pick your format and quality
Paste it into Vidferry and choose MP4 for video or MP3 for audio, at the quality you want. That's the only decision to make.
- 3
Download to your folder
Hit download and the file lands straight in the folder you picked, ready to watch or listen offline. No website in the middle.
Y2mate alternative FAQ
On October 14, 2025, the IFPI, the recorded-music industry's global trade body, shut down y2mate.com and eleven other stream-ripping sites through an enforcement action in Vietnam, where the operator was based. Those sites had drawn more than 620 million visits in the prior year, and the domains, including y2mate.com, yt1s.com, and utomp3.com, are now held by the music industry. The original y2mate simply doesn't work anymore. There's a fuller account on our is y2mate safe post.
They're copycats, not the original. When the real y2mate.com went down, its name kept pulling traffic, so clones sprang up on other domains borrowing the look. With no reputation to protect, they tend to run the sketchiest ad networks, and some hide malware inside fake 'downloader' pages. They're best avoided. Even the original was flagged by AVG and Malwarebytes for adware before it closed.
Vidferry is $12 once, not free, and that's the point: because you paid for it, it has no ads to run and no reason to harvest your links. The old free y2mate paid its bills with the pop-ups and fake buttons you're trying to leave behind. If free is a hard requirement, our best video downloaders roundup covers the honest free options, including one clean web tool.
Yes. Paste a YouTube link, switch the format to MP3 (or M4A), and Vidferry pulls the audio out and saves it on your machine at the best quality the video has. The dedicated YouTube to MP3 page walks through it, and a whole playlist works the same way.
It depends on what you download and why, not on the tool, and this isn't legal advice. Saving your own uploads, public-domain clips, or Creative Commons work within its license is generally low risk. Downloading copyrighted music or video to keep or share is where it crosses a line. Check the rules where you live.
Yes. Vidferry runs on both macOS and Windows, from one $12 purchase, with no subscription. It downloads straight to a folder you choose and updates itself in the background, so it keeps working as sites change.
Guides for the sites you use
Same paste, same app. Here’s how it goes on each.
Ready to ferry?
Paste your first link in under a minute. $12 once, yours to keep, on Mac and PC.