Don't Lose Your Favorite Clips: How to Download Videos From Facebook

(Credit: Shutterstock/DenPhotos)

Popular video sites often make it difficult to download content, usually for copyright and revenue reasons. Instead, they prefer you share a direct link or post it on your feed, where it'll continue to rack up those pre-roll ad dollars. But if you're looking to secure a permanent copy of a clip you spotted on Facebook—something not your own—you probably have your reasons. And since we trust you, we're here to tell you how to download them. (If you only want a copy of the photos and video you personally uploaded, read How to Download Your Facebook Data.)

If you have desktop software in place to download YouTube videos, such as 4K Video Downloader, try that. Most of the tools that work for YouTube, Vimeo, and others also work with Facebook URLs. But there are other methods.

Direct Desktop Downloads

Facebook provides a "Save Video" link in the ellipsis menu next to almost every video. But that's not for saving the video to your local storage—it only "saves" it on Facebook to a section of your account called "Saved Videos," where you can create collections to watch later. If the owner deletes the video, you won't have access to it anymore.

The steps to putting a Facebook video on your computer are a bit convoluted, but not difficult. First, in your browser, click the three-dot ellipsis menu on a video and select Copy link. (You may not see this option if the video is listed as private.)

Paste that into a new browser tab and watch it forward the shortened link (starting with https://fb.watch/) to something that starts with https://www.facebook.com/watch/. In the address bar, change the "www" to "mbasic."

That forces the browser to load the mobile version of the page for you. Right-click the video, and select Open link in new tab. In this new third tab, all you'll see is the video, and you can right-click again and select Save video as to put it on your PC.

The downside here is you're not getting a particularly hi-res video this way. But there is an easy way to get a higher-quality video from Facebook.

Crank Up the Resolution Via a Web Helper Site

Skip the complicated process above and use FDown.net. It's ad-supported to keep the lights on, but some are ad-traps with boxes saying "Start," "Start Download," or "Continue," so don't click on those.

Paste in the Facebook URL you snagged by selecting Copy Link from the ellipsis menu. The site will parse all content for you and provide links to grab either the "Normal Quality" version (the same as you get with the steps above) or an "HD Quality" video. I used it to grab a movie trailer and the normal quality was a blocky 4.6MB file; the HD was a gorgeous 27MB file. I had similar results with even the PCMag video in the examples above.

You can click the links or right-click to select Save link as. The More Options box can try to force a standard definition or high-definition download, and also do an audio fix.

If you use a Chromium-based browser like Edge or Chrome, and find you're using FDown.net a lot, consider grabbing its extension called Video Downloader PLUS. It puts a download button right on the video if it's downloadable. That is one of many extensions from many developers that allow Facebook downloads. Try out a few and pick a favorite.

Make Mobile Downloads

FDown.net shines on mobile devices as well, be it on Android or iOS. In the past it had some issues with Safari and Chrome and they recommended using mobile Firefox. In new tests it worked fine on any mobile browser tried. (This won't work on private/non-public videos, but you may not know they're private until the last step. Even then, try again, there were some false positives on "private" videos in testing.)

Find a video on Facebook (in any browser). Even if it's a Reels video. Click the ellipsis to get a Copy Link or click the option to Share it. At the share screen, look for the option to Copy Link. In the browser, load FDown.net, paste in the URL, and press download.

You'll see the options to get a video in Normal Quality or HD Quality again; tap and hold your finger on whichever you prefer for an option that says Download Link, then a Download Now confirmation.

With Safari on iOS, this puts the video in the Files app. If you use Firefox it goes to browser's Downloads section. You can access that via the Firefox hamburger menu on the lower right (the three lines). Click on the link for the video—it'll probably look like a long string of numbers. Tap Save Video to put it in the camera roll on your device. If the video is private or not public, you'll see the warning below.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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