Purffle / PurffleGrab / Guides / Downloader for Mac

Free YouTube & Spotify downloader for Mac.

PurffleGrab runs natively on Apple Silicon Macs. Here is how to install it, get past macOS's "damaged" or "unidentified developer" warning in under a minute, and start downloading YouTube videos and Spotify playlists.

3 min readUpdated 27 September 2026For PurffleGrab v11.7.2

What you need

  • An Apple Silicon Mac (M1, M2, M3 or M4) running macOS 11 Big Sur or later.
  • A few hundred MB of free space for the app, plus room for your downloads.
  • Nothing else — FFmpeg and the yt-dlp engine are bundled inside the app. No Homebrew, no Python.
Intel Macs: the current release ships an Apple Silicon (arm64) build only, so it won't run on Intel Macs. Watch the release notes for changes.

Install it

Download the .dmg

Get PurffleGrab-11.7.2-arm64.dmg from the download section (about 130 MB).

Drag it to Applications

Open the .dmg and drag PurffleGrab into your Applications folder, then eject the disk image.

Open it the first time with right-click

In Applications, right-click (or Control-click) PurffleGrab and choose Open, then Open again in the dialog. Double-clicking won't show that button the first time. After this, it opens normally.

"PurffleGrab is damaged and can't be opened"

This message looks alarming but isn't about the file being broken. PurffleGrab is free and isn't notarised by Apple (that requires a paid developer membership), so macOS attaches a quarantine flag to the download and refuses to open it. Removing that flag fixes it. Open Terminal and run:

$ xattr -cr /Applications/PurffleGrab.app

Then open PurffleGrab normally. You only need to do this once per install. If you'd rather not use Terminal, System Settings → Privacy & Security shows an Open Anyway button right after the first blocked launch.

What the app does: it has no ads, no telemetry and no account system, and it only connects to the sites you download from and to GitHub to check for updates. Only download it from this site or the official GitHub releases page.

Download from YouTube and Spotify on your Mac

Once it's open, it works the same as on every platform:

  • YouTube video to MP4 — paste the link, choose Best video (4K) or 1080p MP4, click Download. The MP4 uses H.264/AAC, so it plays in QuickTime, Photos, iMovie and on iPhone.
  • YouTube to MP3 — choose the MP3 320 preset. Full guide.
  • Spotify playlist to MP3 or FLAC — paste the playlist link, click Analyze, pick tracks and a format. Full guide.
  • Apple Music / Music app — choose M4A for the most native format, then drag the files into Music. Cover art and tags come along.

Files are saved to ~/Music/PurffleGrab by default; change it in Settings.

macOS · light themePurffleGrab running on a Mac in light theme with a Spotify playlist analysed
PurffleGrab v11.7.2 in light theme — the Mac build has every feature of the Windows and Linux versions.

Mac questions

Is there a free YouTube downloader for Mac with no ads?

Yes — PurffleGrab is free for Apple Silicon Macs with no ads, no account and no download limits. It downloads YouTube videos up to 4K and audio up to 320 kbps MP3, plus Spotify playlists to MP3 or FLAC.

Does it need Homebrew, Python or FFmpeg?

No. Everything it needs is inside the app bundle, and the YouTube engine updates itself.

Will it run on an Intel Mac?

The current release is Apple Silicon only. See the note under What you need.

How do I uninstall it?

Drag PurffleGrab from Applications to the Bin. Your downloaded files in ~/Music/PurffleGrab are left alone.