Melt spinning (MS) and ball milling (BM) were employed to fabricate YMg 11 Ni alloy, and their structures and hydrogen storage performances were examined. The results reveal that the as-spun and as-milled alloys both exhibit the nanocrystalline and amorphous structure. The as-milled alloy shows a larger hydrogen absorption capacity as compared with the as-spun alloy. More than that, the as-milled alloy exhibits lower onset hydrogen desorption temperature than the as-spun one, which are 549.8 and 560.9 K, respectively. Additionally, the as-milled alloy shows a superior hydrogen desorption property to the as-spun one. On the basis of the time needed by desorbing hydrogen of 3 wt% H 2 , for the asmilled alloy, it needs 1106, 456, 343, and 180 s corresponding to hydrogen desorption temperatures of 593, 613, 633, and 653 K. However, for the as-spun alloy, the time needed is greater than 2928, 842, 356, and 197 s corresponding to the same temperatures. Hydrogen desorption activation energies of as-milled and as-spun alloys are 98.01 and 105.49 kJ/mol, respectively, which is responsible for that the as-milled alloy possesses a much faster dehydriding rate. By means of the measurement of pressure-composition-temperature (P-C-T) curves, the dehydrogenation enthalpy change of the alloys prepared by MS (DH de (MS)) and BM (DH de (BM)) is 81.84 and 79.46 kJ/mol, respectively, viz. DH de (MS) [ DH de (BM).