How to Download a Twitter/X Video as MP4

X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) doesn’t give you a download button on videos. You can save photos with a right-click, but videos are deliberately locked down. The video plays in the browser but there’s no easy way to save the file itself.

If you’re trying to keep a copy — for archiving a moment you care about, sharing with someone who doesn’t have an X account, or just having an offline version — here’s the simplest way.

The fastest method

Use the Twitter video downloader. Paste the URL of the tweet, click download, get the MP4 file. Two steps.

Walkthrough:

Get the tweet URL. On the X website or app, find the tweet that contains the video. Click the share button (the arrow icon) → “Copy link.” On desktop, you can also just copy the URL from your browser’s address bar.
Open the Twitter Video Downloader. Paste the URL into the input box. Click download.
Pick the quality. Twitter usually serves multiple resolutions (1080p, 720p, 480p). Higher resolution = bigger file. For sharing with friends or just keeping a copy, 720p is plenty. For archival or future editing, grab the highest available.
Save the MP4. The file downloads to your computer or phone like any other download.

The download happens through a CORS proxy our worker runs — it fetches the video bytes on your behalf, since Twitter blocks direct fetches from browser JavaScript. The video file itself comes straight from Twitter’s CDN; we don’t host any of it.

What kinds of tweet URLs work?

The downloader accepts any of these formats:

Standard tweet URL: https://twitter.com/username/status/1234567890123456789
X-branded URL: https://x.com/username/status/1234567890123456789
Mobile URL: https://mobile.twitter.com/username/status/... (older format, still works)
Threads and replies: yes — just use the URL of the specific tweet that contains the video, not the root of the thread
Quote tweets: use the URL of the original tweet (the one being quoted) if you want that video. Quote tweets show the embedded video but the download links live on the original.

Things that won’t work:

Private accounts — if the video is on a protected account that you don’t follow, the API call to fetch tweet metadata fails. Public accounts only.
Deleted tweets — once a tweet is deleted, the video is gone. No way to recover it after the fact.
DM-attached videos — these are private, not exposed through the public API.
Live broadcasts — these stream rather than store as fixed video files. Can’t be downloaded the same way.

Why does Twitter make this hard?

Mostly business reasons. Every minute someone spends watching a video on Twitter (with the ads, the algorithm pushing more content, the engagement signals) is more valuable to them than that same minute spent watching a downloaded MP4 elsewhere. Locking videos to the platform keeps eyeballs on the platform.

There’s also a legal cover story about respecting creators’ content, but that’s mostly a fig leaf — creators who care about restricting their work can watermark, copyright-claim, or set their account to private. The download lock affects everyone equally regardless of whether anyone has objected.

For everyday cases — saving a video you found funny, archiving a thread you care about, sharing a clip with someone who doesn’t use Twitter — the limitation is more friction than legitimate protection.

Is downloading Twitter videos legal?

The answer depends on:

What you’re going to do with it. Saving for personal use, sharing one-to-one with a friend, archiving for your own reference — all fine in most jurisdictions and not commercially threatening to anyone.
Whether you’re republishing it. Re-uploading someone else’s video to a different platform (claiming you made it, or even just hosting it without credit) is straightforwardly copyright infringement and you’d be liable.
What’s in the video. Even with permission to download, the contents may be subject to other restrictions (sensitive material, recognizable people in private settings, etc.).

For personal use, downloading public Twitter videos is broadly accepted. For redistribution, you need the creator’s permission like with any other content.

After you have the MP4

Once you have the file, you can do all the usual things:

Send it to someone. MP4 is universally supported in messaging apps, email (if file size permits), and on every operating system.
Extract just the audio with MP4 to MP3 if you only want the sound (e.g., a song clip).
Trim a section out using a desktop tool like HandBrake (free) or any video editor.
Save to phone for offline viewing. Tap the MP4 in your downloaded files, save to Photos / Files.

Why not just screen-record?

You can, and it’s a valid backup approach. But screen recording has downsides:

Quality loss — you’re recording your screen, which compresses the original video again, so you lose detail.
No audio control — you get whatever your system was outputting, often with mic noise or other background sound mixed in.
Slow — for a 5-minute video, you have to play it through for 5 minutes while recording.
Watermarks — if you’re using a third-party screen recorder, many add watermarks unless you pay.

Downloading the actual MP4 gives you a clean, original-quality copy without sitting through the video to capture it.

What about Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube?

Different platforms, different rules. We have a Reddit Video Downloader that works similarly to this one. For Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, we don’t have tools — those platforms aggressively block third-party downloaders, and any tool that tries gets shut down within months. Your best option for those is the platform’s own “save for later” or “download” functionality (where it exists), or a desktop tool like yt-dlp for power users (open source, command-line, but works reliably).

Privacy

Like everything else on this site:

The Twitter URL you paste gets analyzed in your browser
Our worker (running on Cloudflare) makes a single API call to Twitter to fetch the video metadata
The video bytes are proxied through our worker (because browsers won’t let JavaScript fetch from Twitter’s CDN directly)
We don’t log URLs, don’t store videos, don’t track downloads

The proxy step exists purely as a CORS workaround — there’s no way for our server to know what’s in the video, and no copy of it persists.

TL;DR

Public Twitter/X video → Twitter Video Downloader
Paste URL, pick quality, save MP4
Audio-only version → run the MP4 through MP4 to MP3
Reddit video → Reddit Video Downloader
Other platforms (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube): not directly supported — those platforms actively block downloaders