TED Talk Downloader
Save a TED talk as MP4 and take the subtitle language you actually need with it.
Why download TED videos with ViralMint?
The unusual thing about TED is the subtitles. A popular talk carries volunteer translations into a hundred or more languages, which makes TED one of the richest parallel-text corpora on the open web and the reason teachers and language learners download talks rather than stream them. Most downloaders throw all of that away and hand you a bare MP4. ViralMint saves the subtitle tracks alongside the video, so a talk downloaded for a Spanish classroom actually arrives with Spanish subtitles. TED's talks are published under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND, which permits downloading and non-commercial sharing of the unmodified talk with attribution — that licence is also why re-cutting a talk into clips for monetised content is not covered, whatever the tool can technically do.
How to download from TED
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Copy the TED video URL
From ted.com, copy the share or page URL — e.g.
https://www.ted.com/talks/example_speaker_example_talk_title -
Paste it into ViralMint
Open the ViralMint desktop app and paste the URL into chat. The planner detects the TED URL and triggers the download automatically — no flags, no command line.
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Get the mp4, transcript and AI insights
The video lands in the Videos page with a local Whisper transcript and AI-extracted hook / structure / tone — ready for clip extraction or repurposing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I get the talk's subtitles in a specific language?
Yes, for any language TED publishes on that talk — frequently more than a hundred, contributed by TED's volunteer translators. The tracks are saved next to the MP4, so a normal player picks them up straight away.
Is downloading TED talks allowed?
TED publishes under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND. Downloading and sharing the unmodified talk non-commercially with attribution is within the licence; cutting it up or using it commercially is not — the ND clause is the one people miss.
Can I download a whole TED playlist?
Yes. Playlist and series URLs expand into their talks and queue together, which is the usual pattern for building an offline set around a topic.
How ViralMint compares to other TED downloaders
| Approach | Examples | Trade-off | ViralMint advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Online converters | Y2mate, SaveFrom, ssyoutube, OnlineVideoConverter | Pop-up ads, redirects, quality capped at 720p, file-size limits, no batch downloads, your URL logged to ad networks | Local app, zero ads, original quality (up to Up to 1080p), unlimited file size, batch mode |
| Browser extensions | Video DownloadHelper, FastestTube, similar Chrome / Firefox add-ons | Routinely broken after TED updates, removed from stores for ToS violations, no transcript or AI analysis | Updates with yt-dlp upstream (community-maintained), independent of browser extension stores, Whisper transcript built in |
| yt-dlp command line | yt-dlp, youtube-dl | Most flexible option but requires terminal comfort, manual cookie handling, no GUI for batch selection | Same yt-dlp under the hood, wrapped in a desktop GUI with cookie auto-detect, batch UI, and post-processing pipeline |
| Closed-source desktop apps | 4K Video Downloader, Allavsoft, ByClick Downloader | Closed-source, paid tiers gate batch and HD, no AI pipeline, no extensible Whisper / FFmpeg post-processing | Open source (AGPL-3.0), AI features prepaid per-action, integrates with the rest of the ViralMint creator pipeline |
Supported URL Example
https://www.ted.com/talks/example_speaker_example_talk_titleEquivalent yt-dlp command
If you already use yt-dlp, the desktop app's TED download is equivalent to running:
yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" --merge-output-format mp4 "https://www.ted.com/talks/example_speaker_example_talk_title"ViralMint also auto-runs Whisper transcription, downloads the thumbnail, and extracts AI hook / structure / tone insights — steps that take a separate command chain in raw yt-dlp.