How to download all your Facebook videos and photos
Facebook's export tool packages everything you've uploaded into a download. The steps, the settings that matter, and what to expect.
2 min read · Updated
Years of videos and photos can build up on Facebook — birthday clips, holiday albums, live streams. Facebook's official export lets you download them all at once, which is the right way to back up your own account before leaving or just to keep a copy.
Start the export
Facebook's export lives in Meta's Accounts Center:
- Open Facebook, tap or click your profile picture, and choose Settings & privacy › Settings.
- Open Accounts Center, then Your information and permissions.
- Choose Export your information, then Create export.
- Select your Facebook profile and choose Export to device.
Settings that matter
Facebook lets you shape the export before it's created:
- Information to include — choose the posts, photos and videos categories rather than everything, unless you want a full account archive.
- Date range — “All time” for a complete backup, or a shorter range for a specific period.
- Format — HTML opens like a web page and is easiest to browse; JSON is for moving data into other services.
- Media quality — High, Medium or Low. High produces larger files but keeps the best copies.
Receiving the files
Facebook prepares the export and notifies you when it's ready, which can take a while for large accounts. You'll be asked for your password before downloading. The download is a zip file (or several); extract it and open index.html to browse, or go to the folders containing your photos and videos.
What you'll get — and won't
The export contains media you uploaded, at the quality Facebook stores. Facebook compresses videos on upload, so these are not your camera originals — why Facebook videos look blurry explains why. Videos other people posted, even ones you're tagged in, aren't part of your export.
One video instead of everything
For a single public video or Reel, exporting your whole account is unnecessary: paste its link into the Facebook downloader and choose HD or SD. For a whole-account backup that also includes other platforms, downloading your Instagram data and downloading your own YouTube videos work in similar ways.