A sermon, a tutorial, a funeral announcement, your child on stage at school. You want it on your phone so you can watch it again without burning a bundle, or send it to someone on WhatsApp. Search for how, and the first ten results are websites offering a free download.
This is what actually works, what does not, and what those websites are really doing.
The Save button is a bookmark, not a download
Tap Save on a post or a reel and Facebook adds it to your Saved items. Nothing is put on your phone. Open Saved items somewhere with no signal and the video will not play, because it is still being fetched from Facebook every time.
It is useful for finding something again. It is no help in a trotro with no data.
If it is your own video, Facebook will hand it over
Two routes, and both are free.
- From the post. Open your own post, tap the three dots at the top right, and look for Download. Facebook offers this on videos you posted yourself.
- Everything you ever uploaded. In Settings, look for Download your information (on newer versions it sits under Accounts Centre, with Your information and permissions). Ask for a copy, tick Posts or Videos, choose the quality, and Facebook builds a file and tells you when it is ready. You then have a few days to download it.
The second one is slow but it is the only way to get back videos from a phone you no longer have. Facebook moves these menus around every few months, so look for the words rather than a position on the screen.
If somebody else posted it
Facebook gives you no download button, and that is on purpose: the person who posted it did not agree to it being copied. What works instead:
- Ask them to send it. One message on Messenger or WhatsApp. This is usually the fastest route, and the only one that gets you the full original quality rather than a squashed copy.
- Ask in the group, if that is where it was posted. Somebody usually has the original file.
- Check whether it is somewhere else too. Churches, schools and news pages that post video on Facebook very often put the same thing on YouTube or send it round on WhatsApp, where saving it is straightforward.
- Record your screen. Android and iPhone both have a screen recorder built in, usually in the swipe-down panel. It captures the sound as well. The quality is only as good as what your screen shows, but for keeping a copy to watch yourself it is enough, and nothing gets installed.
Before you post it again
A video belongs to whoever made it. Keeping a copy to watch is one thing. Re-uploading it to your own page, putting your name on it, or using it to advertise something is another, and it is the fastest way to have a page taken down. If you run a page, ask first and credit the person. If somebody has taken your video, report it from the post.
What the download websites are actually selling
They are not charities, and the download is not the product. The product is you.
- They are advertising businesses. Most of the page is adverts, and most of the money comes from how many of them you see or tap.
- Several buttons say Download. Only one of them is the video. The others are adverts dressed as buttons. This is the same trick as everywhere else: see spotting fake messages and links.
- "Install our app for faster downloads." That is an APK from outside the Play Store, and it is one of the most common ways a phone in Ghana ends up full of adverts that appear on the home screen. More on that in do you need antivirus.
- "Allow notifications." Say yes once and the junk notifications keep arriving long after you have forgotten the site.
- They see the link you paste. If the video was in a private group or a family chat, you have just handed its address to a stranger's server.
- You may pay for the data twice. Many of them pull the video onto their own server first and then send it to you, so the download is slower and no cheaper.
None of this is a reason to feel foolish for using one. The sites are built to look like the obvious answer. It is just worth knowing what you are paying with.
To be straight about it: this site carries adverts too, and they pay for the hosting. That is said plainly on the how your files are handled page. The difference worth naming is what the adverts are attached to. On those sites the download is the bait and the advertising is the whole business. Judge any site, this one included, by whether the thing you came for actually works, and by whether anything on the page is pretending to be a button it is not.
This site has no download tool of its own, for Facebook or for anywhere else, and will not add one. The reason is on the how your files are handled page.
Once the video is on your phone
- It costs no data to watch. Open it from Gallery, Photos or the Files app and play it as many times as you like.
- If it is too big to send, WhatsApp and email both refuse large videos. Split a big file breaks it into pieces the other person can join back together.
- If you only wanted the talking, a sermon or a lecture is far smaller as sound alone. Take the audio out of a video gives you an MP3 you can play with the screen off.
- If you want to shorten it or add a caption, see editing video on a phone.
The short version
Your own video, Facebook will give you. Someone else's, the person who posted it will usually send you in thirty seconds if you ask. The websites in between are selling adverts and app installs, and they are the most expensive route of the three.
Tools that help with this
Free, and they work inside your browser without uploading anything.