How to Download Movies on Your Laptop to Watch Offline
The Download Button That Is Not There
You have Netflix, Prime Video, or Disney+, you are about to get on a flight, and you open the app on your laptop to save a few films for the trip. There is no download button. Nothing is broken and your account is fine. The feature either was never there on desktop or was taken away.
Phone apps and laptop apps get treated very differently by streaming services, and almost none of that difference is explained anywhere.
The Short Answer
- Netflix removed desktop downloads in July 2024 and has not brought them back.
- Prime Video still supports them on Windows and macOS.
- Disney+ and Hulu never did.
- Tubi and Pluto TV, the two biggest free services, stream only on every platform.
Three paid subscriptions and no way to save a film to your laptop is the normal state of things. There is no setting you have missed.
What Netflix Actually Did
Netflix used to ship a Windows app with a download feature. In July 2024 it replaced that app with a web-based version, and the download button went with it. Macs never had the option at all, because there is no Netflix app for macOS.
Today Netflix downloads work on Android phones and tablets, iPhone and iPad, Amazon Fire tablets, and Chromebooks. There is no first-party way to download Netflix to a Windows or macOS laptop. Reinstalling the app, updating Windows, or hunting for a different version in the Microsoft Store will not bring it back.
The limits are worth knowing even on the devices that do support it. Ad-supported plans allow roughly 15 downloads per device per month, ad-free plans allow up to 100 active downloads, unwatched titles expire after 7 to 30 days, and anything you start watching expires 48 hours later.
The Chromebook Exception
One laptop can download Netflix: a Chromebook. It runs the Android app, and the Android app has downloads. The deciding factor is which app store the machine uses. Nothing about the hardware matters. If you own a Chromebook, Netflix is a genuine offline option. If you own anything else, it is not.
Prime Video Is the Real Exception
Amazon is the only major paid service that supports downloads on a laptop. The macOS app has allowed offline viewing since 2021 and needs macOS Big Sur or newer. The Windows app works too, and lets you choose where downloads are stored.
Downloaded titles stay locked inside the app, so you cannot move them to another player. Amazon also blocks casting downloaded content over Chromecast and AirPlay, so offline playback happens on the laptop screen.
Why They Do This
A download on a phone sits inside a locked-down operating system. A download on a laptop sits on a general-purpose computer where the file can be copied, and every service treats that as a piracy risk. There is a business reason stacked on top of it: a downloaded file does not show ads, and streaming does.
The result is a rule that has nothing to do with what you paid for. The same subscription gives you offline access on a six-inch phone and none on a fifteen-inch laptop.
What Actually Works on a Laptop
If you want films on a laptop with no connection, you have three options: library services, public domain archives, and apps that treat desktop offline playback as a real feature.
- Hoopla and Kanopy let you borrow and download films with a library card. Titles expire when the loan period ends.
- The Internet Archive hosts thousands of films you can download outright, with no account and no expiry. The catalog is old by design.
- Lemon TV runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and downloads titles where the source permits it.
The first two cover specific catalogs. The third behaves like a normal video player.
Downloading on a Laptop in Lemon TV
Lemon TV is open source, ad-free, and has no account, and offline playback works on desktop instead of being a mobile-only feature. Install it from the Windows, macOS, or Linux page, open a title, and use the download option in the player. Downloaded films play back with no connection at all.
Not every title can be downloaded, because availability depends on the source. That is why the app describes it as downloading where permitted.
Sizing Up Your Laptop's Storage
Desktop drives are roomier than phone storage, but video fills them faster than people expect. A two-hour film at 1080p runs roughly 3 to 5 GB, and a full season of television can pass 50 GB. Downloading to an external drive works, though playback from a slow USB drive can stutter on high-bitrate files.
If space is tight, download at 720p for laptop viewing. The quality difference on a typical screen is smaller than the file size difference suggests.
What to Avoid
Search for a way to pull Netflix onto your laptop and you will find tools promising to strip the DRM and save the file. They violate Netflix's terms of service, they tend to be the kind of software that bundles extra installers, and they break every time the service changes its protection. None of them are worth recommending.
A legitimate downloader has tells worth knowing. It never asks for your streaming password, and it never requests accessibility permissions. Both point at something other than a video player. We listed the rest of the patterns in the downloader apps guide.
Where to Go From Here
For the free, ad-free version on Windows, macOS, or Linux, Lemon TV's offline mode is built for exactly this. The offline viewing guide covers which services allow downloads at all, and the Android guide covers the phone side.