How to download YouTube Shorts without cropping
Shorts are portrait video in a product built around landscape. Downloaders that assume 16:9 crop straight through the subject, and it usually isn't obvious until you open the file.
- Shorts are typically 1080 × 1920 — taller than they are wide
- Centre-cropping to landscape cuts roughly half the frame
- A correct preview is portrait before you download, not after
What goes wrong
A thumbnail slot fixed at 16:9 with a cover fit will centre-crop anything portrait. On a talking-head Short that usually means the top of the head and the caption text disappear. The download inherits the assumption and you get a letterboxed or cropped file.
How to tell before you save
Look at the preview. If a portrait Short is showing as a landscape rectangle, the tool has already made the wrong assumption about shape, and the file will follow. Here the preview matches the source ratio exactly.
The resolution to expect
Most Shorts are 1080 × 1920. Some older ones are 720 × 1280. Both download at their native size — there is no re-encoding step to introduce softness.
If you only want the sound
Switch to the Audio tab before downloading. You'll get the track without paying for the video bytes, which matters on mobile data.