Offliberty

What Is Offliberty?

Offliberty is a veteran, all-purpose video downloader that appears to have launched around 2010.

It still supports downloading from multiple video sites today, though it previously covered an even wider range — including YouTube and Niconico. Based on Internet Archive records and WHOIS data, it launched as http://offliberty.com in 2010 and moved to its current address, http://offliberty.io, in 2015.

How to Use Offliberty

There's a URL input field right on the homepage. Paste the URL of the page containing the video player and submit — that's all there is to it.

Once the conversion is complete, a download link appears.

The basic flow is similar to SaveFrom, but where SaveFrom asks you to choose a quality and file format before converting, Offliberty starts converting immediately after you submit the URL. If you want to download a video quickly without any extra steps, Offliberty is the more streamlined option.

How Offliberty Downloads Videos

Submitting a URL sends a POST request to http://offliberty.io/offxx.php, where xx appears to be variable — values like 01 or 02 have been observed.

Conversion progress is tracked by polling http://offliberty.io/wait.php?url=xxxx at regular intervals.

When conversion finishes, a download link is issued in a format like http://kxx.offliberty.com/xxxx.mp4.

Putting this together, Offliberty converts the video on its own servers, uploads the result to its own storage, and returns a link to that file. The link expires after a while, so the storage is presumably cleaned up on a regular schedule.

Things to Watch Out For

HTTP, Not HTTPS

Offliberty runs over HTTP rather than HTTPS, which introduces real security risks.

The key difference between the two is encryption. HTTP sends data between your browser and the site in plain text — meaning anyone who intercepts the connection can see exactly what you're doing. Worse, the traffic can be tampered with: what looks like a download link to a video file could be swapped out for a link to malware, and you'd end up downloading it without realizing.

Failed Downloads That Look Like Successes

If you submit a URL from a site Offliberty doesn't support, it still goes through the conversion UI and issues a download link — giving the impression that everything worked.

The telltale sign something went wrong is the file extension at the end of the download link. Instead of .mp4 or another video format, you might see .html. You'll only find out after waiting through the conversion that the file can't be played.

In some cases the download link has no extension at all. It's worth trying to add .mp4 manually — occasionally the file will play correctly once you do.