Ever saw a neat video on Facebook and wanted to save a copy for yourself on your PC? Through normal native means, it’s not possible unless you are the person who uploaded the video. However, there’s a workaround for this that makes it possible.
Just as a disclosure, please make sure that if you plan to save a copy of the video, that you seek permission to re-upload it anywhere else! Just because you found it online does not mean that you have the copyright for it!
Now that our little warning is over, let’s get started.
First, find the video that you want to save. In this case, we’ll use one of my favorite Facebook pages as an example – Tastemade Japan. As mentioned above, by default you can’t save the video – Right clicking only gives you the option to play, mute, or show the video URL. The gear icon only gives you the option to change the video quality.
We need to go to the video itself – there’s two ways to do so. If you’re in your timeline, you can either start playing the video then click the video itself while it’s running: this will bring up the video into a larger view.
Otherwise, right-click the video to bring up the options and click Show Video URL. Copy the address that’s then displayed, and paste it into your browser address field.
Now that you’re in the page for the video itself, we need to change the URL just slightly.
The video’s URL at the moment should appear to be something like this:
Replace www with m. Your URL should now appear as such:
The view of your page will also change — it’ll look really compact and stretched out. This is because you’re now viewing the mobile version of Facebook on your computer!
Now that you got the correct format of the page down, start playing the video. You don’t have to keep it running – just enough to start up the video player.
Depending on your browser, you may have a specific download button appear:
But if not, just right click the video and click “Save Video As… “ and choose the location you’d like to save the video.
And there you have it — This method should work on most current browsers, including Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer and Firefox.