Downloading Facebook videos, to save and safeguard on your computer, is not easy. You are welcome to right-click on a photo, and use ther Save As function to sock that away. But Meta doesn’t want you to abscond with a video file. If you try the Save As trick, you’ll wind up with a confusing HTML folder of mystery files, or a WEBP file that doesn’t do anything for you. So how can you get around all of this?
Use a Downloader Website
There are a variety of websites that will help you circumvent this Facebook roadblock. Consider:
To use one of these sites, you would:
- Go to the video you want to save, on the Facebook website. (You have to click on the video to view it and get away from your feed)
- Highlight and copy the URL (address) from the top of your browser.
- Visit a FB Video Downloader site and paste in the URL.
- Use the site’s Download button to get your file. It should be in a standard MP4 file that will play on any device or computer!
There are a lot of other websites like these out there. Be careful! Other download websites will have a lot of ads and deceptive downloads included. I’ve tested the 3 sites above, though, and they are fairly safe to visit.
Use a Browser Extension
If you plan on downloading a large number of videos, then a browser extension may be more convenient. This freebie will install an icon in the corner of your browser to help you quickly download the video you are viewing.
I’ve tested a few of these, and most are disappointing, or sketchy. But this one should work in the Chrome or Edge browser:
Still Confounded?
There are a lot of other ideas for saving FB videos out there, but many no longer work. Meta is constantly changing their site to prevent this sort of thing. And if a video is not set to Public, that may also stop you from downloading it, using any tool. If you can’t get any of these tactics to work, you may have to give up, or contact the video creator to get the video through a non-Facebook source.