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Download Facebook Reels

Save public Facebook Reels as vertical MP4, the same way you would save any other video on the platform.

Facebook Reels are Meta's third attempt at the same format, after Instagram Reels and before that Stories. They behave much like Instagram Reels technically, but they live inside a platform built around audience controls, which changes what you can and cannot save.

Public Reels download normally. Reels posted to a restricted audience, a private group or a friends only profile do not, and that is a deliberate limit rather than a missing feature. If a Reel you believe is public keeps failing, the causes and fixes for Facebook Reels that will not download go through them in the order worth checking.

How to download Facebook Reels

  1. 1

    Get the Reel link

    Use the three dot menu on the Reel and choose Copy link, or open it in its own page and copy the address. Working links contain /reel/ followed by a long numeric ID.

  2. 2

    Paste it above

    Facebook attaches a great deal of tracking to its links, including fbclid and various ref values. Leave them on, they are ignored. Short fb.watch links work too.

  3. 3

    Choose HD or SD and save

    Facebook usually stores two versions. HD for watching properly, SD when you need something small. Take HD unless data is tight.

Why public and private matters so much here

Facebook is built around audience selection in a way no other platform in this list is. The same Reel link can show you a video and show a stranger a login wall, depending on choices the poster made. When a download fails here but the video plays perfectly in your own browser, that gap is almost always the reason.

The test takes ten seconds. Open a private or incognito window, paste the link, and see what Facebook shows someone who is not signed in. If it plays, we can fetch it. If you get a login prompt, the audience is restricted and that restriction belongs to the person who posted it.

Quality on Facebook Reels

Vertical 1080x1920 at best, same as Instagram, though Facebook has historically compressed harder than its sibling platforms. A Reel cross posted from Instagram often looks slightly softer on Facebook, because it has been through two rounds of platform encoding rather than one.

If the same Reel exists on both platforms and quality matters to you, the Instagram copy is usually the better source. Our Instagram Reels page covers that side, and the two files are frequently not identical despite looking the same in a feed.

Cross posting and what it does to files

Meta encourages creators to publish a Reel once and distribute it to both Instagram and Facebook. That convenience has a cost: the Facebook version is often a re-encode of the Instagram version rather than a fresh encode of the creator's original export.

You can sometimes see this in fine detail and in fast motion, where the second pass compounds the artefacts from the first. It is not dramatic, but it is real, and it is the reason to prefer the original platform when you have the choice.

Reposting, and why Facebook cares

Facebook calls the practice of re-uploading someone else's video freebooting, and it actively penalises it. Pages that do it lose reach and monetisation, and the detection has got considerably better than it was when the term was coined.

Sharing the original post costs you nothing, keeps the creator's numbers intact, and typically performs better than a re-upload anyway because the algorithm favours original distribution. If you need a copy for a presentation or an archive, that is a different and entirely legitimate use.

Everything above also applies to the rest of Facebook video downloads, and our guide to downloading Facebook video in HD goes further on the parts people get stuck on.

Facebook Reels Downloader questions

Any public one. Reels from private profiles, closed groups or audience restricted posts require an authenticated session and are not accessible here. Checking the link in a logged out browser window tells you which category a given Reel falls into.

Usually vertical 1080x1920 for the HD option and around 360p for the SD one. Facebook compresses more aggressively than most platforms, so expect a slightly softer picture than the same clip on Instagram if it was cross posted.

Yes. The mobile share sheet produces fb.watch short links and we follow the redirect automatically. The full facebook.com/reel/ form works equally well, and so does a share link containing /share/r/ or /share/v/.

Because cross posted Reels are often re-encoded rather than freshly encoded from the creator's original file. Two rounds of compression compound each other. When the same Reel exists in both places, Instagram is usually the better source.

No. Group content requires membership and an authenticated session, and even public groups sometimes restrict media to members only. This tool reads what a signed out visitor can see, which is the definition of public.

Yes, as an AAC track inside the MP4. As with Instagram, music in Reels is licensed for playback on Meta platforms rather than for redistribution, so re-uploading with the original track elsewhere can attract a copyright claim.

No. Facebook sends no notification when a public video is downloaded. That absence of a signal is a reason to be more careful about how you use the file rather than less, particularly if you are thinking about reposting it.

Yes, and it is one of the most common legitimate uses. If it is your own content, though, your original export is a better master than anything Facebook will hand back, since the platform copy has been compressed at least once on the way in.

Related guides

Longer write-ups on the questions people run into most here.

How to Download Facebook Videos and Reels in HDFacebook keeps two copies of most videos and serves whichever your connection can handle. The HD one is usually there. Here is how to act...How to Download a Facebook Video From MessengerMessenger has its own save button for videos people send you. Shared Facebook posts are a different case, and that is where a downloader...Where Do Downloaded Videos Go on iPhone? How to Find ThemYou tapped download, Safari said it finished, and the video is nowhere in Photos. It is in the Files app. Here is exactly where, and how...

More Facebook tools

All Facebook downloads

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The same job on the other platforms, each with its own quirks.

Instagram Reels DownloaderThe vertical short-form format specifically, saved at the resolution Instagram stored, audio included.YouTube Shorts DownloaderThe vertical format specifically. Shorts are encoded differently from regular uploads and behave differently when saved.TikTok No Watermark DownloaderStraight answers about the watermark, and every rendition TikTok serves for a post. No crops, no blur patches.