How to Download Videos on Android

1. Copy the link to the video. In most apps this is Share, then Copy link.

2. Open Chrome and go to the downloader page for that platform.

3. Paste the link and pick a quality. The file size is shown next to each option.

4. Tap Download. If Chrome asks for confirmation, tap Download again.

5. A notification appears when it finishes, and tapping it opens the file.

The most reliable route is the Files or My Files app: open it, tap Internal storage, then Download. Everything Chrome has saved is there.

Most gallery apps also index that folder and will show new videos in an album called Download. This can take up to a minute, so if a video is not there immediately, pull down to refresh rather than assuming the download failed.

You can also open Chrome's own list by tapping the three-dot menu and choosing Downloads, which shows everything with the option to open or delete each item.

Standard downloads to Chrome's own Download folder need no permission at all. If you are being prompted repeatedly, it is usually because you changed the download location to somewhere outside Chrome's sandbox, such as an SD card.

Open Chrome, tap the three-dot menu, then Settings, then Downloads, and set the location back to internal storage. The prompts stop.

Galleries, carousels and TikTok photo posts produce multiple separate files rather than one. Chrome may ask permission for the first of these and then allow the rest automatically.

Expect several notifications — one per file. They all land in the same Download folder.

Video files have grown considerably as platforms have raised their length limits. A ten-minute clip at 1080p can pass 100 MB, and a few of those fill a phone quickly.

The file size shown next to each quality option is there to help. On a nearly-full phone, 480p is usually indistinguishable on a phone screen and a fraction of the size.

Once a video is in your Download folder it is an ordinary file, which makes Android considerably more flexible than iPhone here. Plug into a computer with a USB cable, choose File Transfer when the notification appears, and the Download folder is browsable directly.

You can also share straight out of the Files app to Google Drive, Telegram, or anything else in your share sheet, without the file needing to be in your gallery at all.

This matters because gallery apps sometimes refuse to index a file — usually a container or codec they do not recognise. The file is still perfectly fine; it just is not showing in Gallery. Opening it from the Files app confirms whether the download actually worked.

If a downloaded video opens but shows a black screen, or refuses to open at all, the usual cause is a codec your default player does not handle. Android's built-in player is more limited than most people expect, particularly with VP9 and AV1.

Install VLC, which plays essentially everything, and try again. If VLC opens it, the file is fine and the problem was your player. If VLC also fails, the download was incomplete — check your storage and try again.

Where a tool offers a choice of format, MP4 with H.264 is the safest on Android. It is larger than VP9 or AV1 at the same quality, but it plays on every device without argument.

Everything described here works in Chrome with nothing installed. Downloader apps on the Play Store frequently request storage access far beyond their own folder, plus contacts, location or analytics permissions that saving a video does not require.

Never sign into a social platform through a third-party downloader app. A public video needs no credentials, and any app asking for them should be uninstalled rather than trusted.