YouTube and watermarks
YouTube adds nothing. Here is what the marks you see really are.
By using this site you confirm you have the right to download the file you request.
Nothing is burned in by YouTube
YouTube stores the video as uploaded. It does not paint a logo, a username or a URL into the frames, so a download from here is as clean as the upload was.
What you see over the player — the title bar, the channel watermark in the corner, the end screen cards — is drawn by the player at viewing time and is not in the file.
The channel watermark is the confusing one
Creators can set a small branding image that YouTube overlays in the corner during playback. It is an overlay, not part of the video, and it is simply absent from a download. People expect to have to remove it and then find there is nothing there.
What does stay is anything the creator edited into the picture themselves — an intro logo, a subscribe animation, a URL across the bottom. That is part of the footage and no tool separates it out.
Frequently asked questions
Do you add a watermark?
No. The file is YouTube’s, unaltered.
How do I remove a logo the creator edited in?
Only by cropping or covering it, and both change the picture. There is no clean removal of burned-in pixels.