MacOS – How to save a Facebook video from their PR site to the Mac

macossafari

I use a product called Grappler to save YouTube videos and it usually works for many other video sources when I'm on my Mac.

It's not working to help me download the video file that Facebook has posted on their new home product for Android.

Note that I'm not looking to download thing from people's Facebook accounts, but video from their corporate blog / PR area that is publicly available.

I've opened that link in Safari's inspector (after turning on Show Develop menu in the menu bar in the Advanced pane in Safari's preferences) and can't figure a way to get their CDN to expose the actual file for download.

I'll probably use a screen recorder to grab this file now, but want to learn if a better tool or technique than Grappler exists. I'm open to any solution to get the video file using iOS or Mac software in addition to a technical trick that works in Safari on the Mac. (i.e. I don't need any suggestions for a screen recorder. Screeny app has my back there.)

Best Answer

There is an extension that runs on Firefox that can easily snag that video.

I use Firefox 20.0 with http://www.ant.com/video-downloader

It does not work with Safari, but I've tested the Facebook link for you and it will get you the entire 2 GB video file if you have a fast network connection.

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You will get an unsigned extension warning when installing the add-on, since the video downloader isn't signed by the developer. You also need flash player since it grabs the flash file.