How to copy a video link on any platform

What a usable link looks like

A video link points at one piece of media. You can usually tell by reading it: there's an identifier after a word like watch, reel, video, pin or share. A link ending in an account name has no video in it at all, however you got there.

Short links and country domains are followed to the real page before anything is fetched, so there's no need to open one in a browser first to find the "proper" address.

On a phone: the Share button

In every app the route is the same shape — find Share, then choose Copy link rather than a destination app.

• YouTube — tap Share under the video, then Copy link. On a Short, Share sits in the buttons down the right-hand edge.
• Instagram — tap the paper-plane icon under a post or Reel, then Copy link. From the three-dot menu, Link does the same thing.
• Facebook — tap the three dots on the post, then Copy link. Sharing to another app usually produces an fb.watch link, which also works.
• Pinterest — open the pin, tap the share icon, then Copy link. You'll get a pin.it address.
• Dailymotion — tap Share below the player, then Copy link.
• Loom — open the recording and use Copy link, or copy the address the sender gave you.

If the share sheet puts the link into a message draft along with some text, copy only the part starting with https://. Surrounding words aren't ignored — they make the whole thing unreadable as an address.

On a computer: the address bar is enough

Open the video on its own page and copy what's in the address bar. That works everywhere except one case: a video embedded in someone else's website, where the address bar holds the article's address, not the video's.

For an embedded player, click the platform's logo in the corner of the player — it opens the video's own page — or use the player's share option and copy the address from there. Dailymotion supplies the players on a lot of news and sports sites, so this comes up more often there than elsewhere.

Three links that look right and aren't

These are the common ones:

• A channel, profile or board. instagram.com/username or a Pinterest board address identifies a collection, not a video. Open the individual post first.
• A search or feed address. Copying while scrolling a feed or a results page gives you the page you were on, not the item you were looking at.
• A secret, private or unlisted-to-you page. If the link doesn't open in a private browsing window where you aren't signed in, nothing can read it — see why some videos can't be downloaded.

You don't need to tidy the link

Links copied from apps carry tracking parameters — ?si= on YouTube, igshid on Instagram, fbclid on Facebook. They identify who shared the link, not which video it is, and they're stripped before anything is fetched. Paste the link exactly as the app gave it to you.

One parameter is worth knowing about. A YouTube link copied while the video is playing can carry a start time (&t=), and that is removed too — you'll get the whole video, not the part from that moment on. To keep only a section, set the range on the YouTube clip downloader instead.

Opening a video from inside a playlist

A YouTube link copied while a playlist is open often carries both a video id and a &list= parameter. That is read as the one video you were watching, not the whole playlist — a single link should never turn into a fifty-item job.

To take the playlist itself, use its own page (the address starts with /playlist?list=) and the playlist downloader, where you can tick the videos you want.

Once you have the link

Paste it and you'll see the versions that actually exist for that video, each with its size. Which one to choose is a separate question — 1080p vs 4K covers it — and where downloads go on your phone covers where the file lands afterwards.