How to Save a Private Video from Facebook

Saving a video from your news feed or a group can be a little awkward because you’re operating within an authenticated environment (i.e. you log in to Facebook through your browser) but it’s actually pretty easy. Here are the steps:

1. Browse to the video you want to download in Facebook and start it playing.
2. Right-click the playing video and select Show video URL. Copy the URL and paste it into your browser’s address bar.
3. Still in the address bar, change “www” to “m” to bring up the mobile version of the page; hit enter to load.
4. In Chrome, hit F12 and click on the Network tab (ensure the network log is recording). I also like to check the Disable cache checkbox for convenience but if you don’t, click CTRL+F5 to forcefully reload the page and its resources from the server.
5. Play the video (click play) and locate the the last request that pops up (it should be a .mp4 request).
6. Right-click the request entry and click Copy > Copy link address
7. Paste that address into your address bar and hit enter. The video will load.
8. Right-click > Save As to save the .mp4 file