SurFast Video Downloader Reviews

This is my original review. It was rejected by the Bot because it had a 5-star rating :-) which I saved as a 1-star after edit but apparently it didn't take.

"Dear SurFast
I use several free downloading tools - with adblocker, phew - very successfully for a range of social and video websites and thought it's high time I get a proper downloader.
Having tried the software for about 2 hours now, without a SINGLE successful download, using all different methods - url pasting, private in-app browsing, etc - I am very much inclined to get a refund.
I will give it one more attempt by restarting my MacBook Air. If no success, refund, otherwise I will update my review."

Since then I have had several attempts ... ok let me try again. (A few moments later).
Nope. Still not.
Here is my take. I want it so badly to actually work.

Postives
1. Great idea for managing/converting/organising downloads
2. Interface is intuitive enough
3. Cannot resize window
4. Tracking!! and editing/clipping in one tool

Negatives
1. It's slow. For me at least.
2. Failed 90% of time even on top platforms. I managed to download very few up to now. (Tried it again a few times, and now it seems to get the videos more consistently....mmmm!?) Inconsistent download success.
3. You have to sign in to 'top platforms' after each close, i.e. I signed in to LinkedIn yesterday to unsucessfully try download a video. Today, before writing this review, I wanted to try again, and had to log in all over again.
4. Already downloaded videos must strangely enough be 'uploaded' again to convert to MP3.
5. Clipping videos can strangely enough only be done from a URL and not also from already downloaded videos.
6. It ONLY works on 'TOP' WEBSITES.

I have wasted a lot of time on this software. I hoped it would simplify my workflow. It made it slower and more complicated and delivered on almost nothing promised.

I will hold out for the time being before refunding hoping they can live up to their promise, because then I am on board.

For now? Only 2 Tacos.

Fast app with a clean UI.
The Pro features are great and well worth the upgrade.
Suport was very quick when changing the licence to another device.
5/5, highly recommended.

I've used several video download tools over the years, but I took a chance on SurFast Video Downloader and I'm glad I did. The UI of a lot of these tools is very developer/hacker-y looking, but this one is a lot more refined, and it does a great job of grabbing videos, with several options for how to do that:
- Using a Chrome extension to do it right in the browser (I don't feel this listing makes enough of a big deal about how time-saving and helpful this is! Lots of downloaders don't have this)
- Monitoring the clipboard for video URLs, so copied addresses automatically start a download when switching to Video Downloader
- Manually pasting URLs into the program

It doesn't grab every video from everywhere, but the list of sites it does work with is pretty vast. Plus, unlike a lot of Chrome extension downloaders, this isn't full of gotchas and upsells. This is not a capability I want to pay a monthly subscription for -- although that said, I use this program several times a day to time-shift my viewing to my offline hours, and it works so well that the one-time $19 fee feels too low!

This one's a keeper!

Tested with TikTok, Facebook and Youtube so far.
With youtube, you can also download a complete channel (tested with 148 videos and all but one got parsed! Very impressive. 5+ Tacos.

For the videos that SurFast Video Downloader works with, it works great! I just found that the interview recording I really wanted a copy of couldn't be captured or downloaded.