Is it legal to download videos from social media?

Copyright belongs to the person who made it

A video is protected the moment it is recorded, with no registration needed. That copyright stays with the creator, even after they post it publicly: uploading to a platform grants the platform a licence to show the work, not the public a licence to reuse it.

So downloading does not transfer any rights to you. It gives you a copy, which is a separate question from what you may then do with that copy.

Where private use sits

Most countries treat private, non-commercial copying differently from publishing. The details vary: in the United States it is argued through fair use, in the United Kingdom and much of Europe through narrower private-copying and quotation exceptions, and in India through fair dealing. None of these give a blanket right to copy anything, but all of them treat watching a saved video yourself very differently from putting it in front of an audience.

In practice, the risky part is almost never the download. It is what happens next.

Clearly fine, clearly not

• Fine: saving your own posts, including ones you deleted from the app but still have the link for.
• Fine: keeping a public video for offline viewing, with no re-publishing.
• Fine: saving content you have written permission to use, or that carries a licence allowing reuse.
• Not fine: re-uploading someone else's video as your own, on any platform.
• Not fine: using a creator's work in an advert, a paid product or a monetised channel without permission.
• Not fine: stripping a watermark or a credit to disguise where something came from.

The platform's rules are separate

Terms of service are a contract with the platform, not the law. Most of them ask you not to access content through unofficial tools. Breaking that is not a criminal matter; the consequence is account-level, such as a restriction or a ban, and it applies to the account doing it.

Downloading without being signed in sits outside that relationship, which is one practical reason a tool that never asks for your login is safer for you. A site that wants your username and password is asking you to hand over the account that could be penalised, and to a stranger.

If you are the creator

Downloads are not the real problem; re-uploads are. Watermarks on your own content help viewers find you when a clip travels, and posting consistently makes your version the one search results favour.

When something is stolen outright, every major platform has a copyright takedown form, and they act on them. Keep the original file and the upload date: they settle these claims quickly.

We refuse private-account downloads outright, do not offer watermark removal and act on good-faith takedown requests through the contact page.