YouTube Shorts Downloader Pro

Save YouTube Shorts that you own or are allowed to download, in bulk and at the quality you choose.

What it does

• Process several Shorts URLs in one run (direct YouTube video URLs are also accepted for compatibility)
• Choose a maximum resolution from 144p to 1440p
• Return the title, channel, duration, thumbnail, views, and download result for every Short
• Save successful files in the run’s storage
• Use optional cookies for content you are authorized to access
• Use a proxy for metadata extraction if a video is unavailable from your location or requests are rate-limited; full media is always downloaded directly

Get started

Paste one or more Shorts URLs, pick a resolution, and choose how many should run at once.

{
  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vVoMLnsbQqE"],
  "resolution": "720p",
  "max_concurrent": 3
}

Ready-to-run presets

Low-cost single Short:

{
  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vVoMLnsbQqE"],
  "resolution": "480p",
  "max_concurrent": 1,
  "proxyConfiguration": {"useApifyProxy": false}
}

Small approved batch:

{
  "urls": [
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vVoMLnsbQqE",
    "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G56v017spr0"
  ],
  "resolution": "720p",
  "max_concurrent": 3
}

Authorized recovery for a blocked or region-limited source:

{
  "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vVoMLnsbQqE"],
  "resolution": "720p",
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": true,
    "apifyProxyGroups": ["RESIDENTIAL"]
  }
}

Add authorized cookies only in the secret cookies input; never place them in a shared task or README.

Best for

• Saving Shorts that you own or are authorized to use for social, editorial, or archival workflows
• Processing a small batch with per-URL success and error records
• Retrying location- or rate-limit-related metadata failures with an explicitly selected proxy; full media remains direct

Results

Successful downloads appear in the default dataset with the saved-file link and video details. In pay-per-event runs, failed or invalid inputs appear in the separate Diagnostics dataset and incur no result charge. Rental runs retain both successful and failed rows in the default dataset. Diagnostics explain which URL, access setting, or proxy choice may need adjustment.

Failed diagnostics use downloadSuccess: false. If every URL fails, the run is marked FAILED after those rows are written. Each run writes RUN_SUMMARY with requested, successful, failed, saved, and skipped counts, plus resolution, proxy, cookie usage, and stoppedAtSpendingLimit. Batches respect the remaining result budget, and no further batch starts after the spending limit is reached. Residential proxy is used for metadata extraction only; full media is always downloaded directly.

Example output

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vVoMLnsbQqE",
  "video_id": "vVoMLnsbQqE",
  "title": "Example Short",
  "downloadSuccess": true,
  "duration": 28,
  "aspect_ratio": "9:16",
  "download_url": "https://api.apify.com/v2/key-value-stores/.../records/vVoMLnsbQqE",
  "error": null
}

Inspect successful download_url values in the results dataset and use error and error_type in Diagnostics to retry failed URLs. Check RUN_SUMMARY for inputs skipped because the spending limit was reached.

Malformed or non-YouTube URLs are retained as Invalid YouTube URL error rows and are not sent through yt-dlp retries. Cookies are a secret textarea input and are written only to a short-lived, permission-restricted temporary file during the run.

Only download content that you own or have permission to save. Availability, formats, and access rules are determined by YouTube and the video owner.

Troubleshooting

• YouTube JavaScript challenge: the Actor bundles yt-dlp's EJS challenge solver and enables the bundled Deno runtime automatically. If YouTube still asks for sign-in, use authorized cookies or retry with the Residential proxy path below.
• Invalid YouTube URL: use a complete /shorts/VIDEO_ID, /watch?v=VIDEO_ID, /embed/VIDEO_ID, or /live/VIDEO_ID URL. Invalid rows are recorded without spending extraction retries.
• Age-restricted or private video: provide authorized Netscape-format cookies in the secret cookies field. Cookies are removed after the run.
• Bot check, 403, or location failure: retry with proxyConfiguration.useApifyProxy: true and the Residential group. The proxy is used for extraction metadata only; full media is always downloaded directly. If a signed URL requires the proxy IP, the Actor reports a clear failure instead of transferring media through it.
• Only some URLs failed: inspect each failed diagnostic item and rerun those URLs; successful downloads do not need to be repeated.

Related Actors

• YouTube Video Downloader — download longer-form YouTube videos with the same per-URL result pattern.
• YouTube Transcript Scraper Pro — turn approved videos into searchable transcripts.