5 Ways to Download Private Video on Facebook (2019 Tested)

Updated Mar 29,2019 | by Cody

You cannot download private video on Facebook just by pasting the video URL to a public Facebook video downloader. You need to take an extra step to download Facebook private videos, and it is easy. All you need is a web browser. 

If you want to download private Facebook Vidoe in HD, then just skip to the last method where it shows you how to download videos using your web browser developer tools. 

How to tell if it is a private video?

Facebook Private videos are those whose privacy is not set to "public" when someone uploads them. When you upload a video on Facebook, you can define who can see this, anyone (Public), friends, friends except some, or only you.

As the screenshot below, if you see the earth logo under the video uploader, then it is a public Facebook video. Otherwise, it is a private Facebook video. You need to use different methods to download those two types of videos off Facebook to your computer or phone.

If you failed to download a Facebook video by entering the video URL to a Facebook video downloader, in most of the cases, if not all, this is a private video.

Most videos uploaded by your friends are private videos because it is the default settings. In order to download a friend’s video from Facebook, try the following steps:

Step 1. Right-click on the private Facebook video and select Copy the URL.

Step 2. Replace the "www" with an "m." in the video URL and open it in a new tab

Step 3. Press F12 to open Developer Tools. Click on the Private Video to play it.

Step 4. In the Developer Tools window, click on the top-left logo and click on the Playing video.

Step 5. In the highlighted lines, you will see the Facebook video source URL. Copy the URL and Open it in a new tab.

Step 6. In the new tab, you can see a download button under the video. You can download this private Facebook video by clicking the download button or right click on the video and select Save Video as…

This method can be used to download any videos uploaded on Facebook, not only Facebook private videos.

I have tried many Private Facebook Video Downloader tools, only to find out that most of them do not work. The one that I am about to show you works really well.

Step 1. Open the Private Facebook Video page.

Step 2. Press Ctrl + U to view the source code.

Step 3. Press Ctrl + A to copy all the source code.

Step 4. Head over to this Facebook private video downloader and paste the full page source code.

Step 5. Click Download and then you will be able to select video quality (HD or SD) to start downloading private video from Facebook.

Usually, you can download the videos from Facebook in SD or HD resolution, but due to the resolution of the original video, you may only have the SD option. That’s how you take a video from Facebook and save it to your computer. In addition, you may also want to know how to save someone’s Facebook video to your iPhone.

To make things quick and convenient, you can use IOTransfer, an all-in-one video downloader for Windows. Not only can it easily download Facebook videos to PC, but also can automatically transfer the downloaded videos to your iOS devices.

Let’s see how it works.

Step 1. Download IOTransfer on your Windows PC (Windows 10/8/7, iOS 8 or later supported).

Step 2. Launch this program. If you want to save the videos to iPhone or iPad, connect your iOS devices to your computer.

Step 3. Click on the VIDEOS tab and paste the Facebook video link that you want to download into the box.

Watch the tutorial video for more details about downloading Facebook video with IOTransfer.

Step 4. Check the option “Automatically transfer the downloaded videos into your iOS devices.” and click the Download button.

Then the Facebook video will be downloaded to your computer and automatically saved to your iPhone or iPad. You can also use the same steps to download Youtube Videos to iPhone.

As Apple introduced Siri Shortcuts, many things become possible on iPhone. Downloading Facebook videos is among them. If you haven’t installed the Shortcuts app, you haven’t made use of your iOS device.

Just free download the Shortcuts app and get this Facebook Video Downloader shortcut. You can open the shortcut link in Safari to get it.

As you know there is no Share button for private Facebook video, so you need to use Safari to open and Shortcuts app to get the video downloaded to iPhone Camera Roll.

Step 1. Open Safari and log in to your Facebook account. Go to the page of the private Facebook video that you want to download.

Step 2. Tap the Share button (Safari) and select Shortcuts.

Step 3. Select the Facebook Video Downloader shortcut.

When it is complete, you can open the Photos app to check the video. This shortcut can also be used to download public Facebook video. You can just copy the video link to run this shortcut.

I have tried a few so-called private Facebook video downloader, but none of them is able to download HD quality Facebook video. I have figure out a way to do it and now I share it with you. All you need is your web browser. Firefox is recommended.

Step 1. Copy the URL of the Facebook video and open it in a new tab.

Step 2. Right click on blank space and select Inspect. You can also press F12 to open Developer Tools.

Step 3. In Developer Tools, click Network tab and select Media. Then rplay the video.

Step 4. When the media links appear, select one video link and copy it. if no link appears, reload this page and play the video.

Step 5. On a new tab, paste the copied URL. Before you load the URL, delete the “bytestart” and “byteend” parameters. After that, you can right click on the video and select Save Video as…

That’s how you can download a private Facebook video in HD. If you don’t see the media URLs under Media tab, then find them from ALL tab. From All tab, you can search for “.mp4” to find it. 

There is only one problem though. The video downloaded using this method does not contain sound. You can use the same method to download the audio version and combine video and audio. 

Bottom Line 

private videos are not supposed to be viewed by anyone, so Facebook may try to update source code in order to stop users from downloading private videos. As you may probably know, some old methods for downloading private video on Facebook are no longer working.

These methods addressed above have been tested many times and is currently working smoothly. You can use it to download private Facebook videos as you like. 

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