How to download a video

This feature requires a paid plan on Vimeo.

Vimeo members have the option to enable their videos for download. But if you have a Basic or Free membership, your viewers will not be able to download your videos; if you upgrade to Starter or higher, the option for enabling downloads will be automatically turned on.

In addition, if you are Basic or Free, you cannot download your own videos from Vimeo unless you upgrade to Starter or higher.

In this article:

Downloading videos

To download a video, click the “Download” button that appears below the video player (not all videos have this — more about that below). Once you’ve clicked it, a little menu will appear where you’ll see links for several different versions of the video. You’ll need to decide which version of the video you’d like to download and click to make the magic happen.

The availability of videos for download depends on the subscription tier of the video’s creator. Basic members cannot enable their videos to be downloaded; however, if the video belongs to a Plus, Pro, or Business member, they have the option to toggle on the download option.

Depending on your browser, clicking the link may result in the video playing in a new tab instead of downloading the file to your computer. Don’t panic! If this occurs:

• For Windows users:

  Right-click on the link and choose “Save as” or “Save target as.”

• For Mac users:

  Hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click the link, then choose “Save link as” or “Download linked file.”

⚠️Note: If you are the video owner or team member on the account, you will always see an option to download your video. You can also do this on the video settings page by opening the ••• menu in the upper right corner, then clicking Download.

Disabling the ability to download your videos

If you’d rather not have your videos available for download, you can disable the option. Under Privacy Settings, we let our members specify whether they want to allow downloading. If you have disabled downloading, viewers won’t see the “Download” button on the video page.

You can disable downloads of your video by navigating to the video, selecting the Privacy option on the right side, and toggling off the Allow download switch at the top of the panel. The setting will automatically save.

To disable downloads of all your videos, go to the Upload defaults tab of your account settings, uncheck the box next to “Download them” (under the “What can people do with your videos?” heading), and check the box next to “Also apply to existing videos,” and then hit the “Save” button.

For added protection against downloading, we also recommend enabling one of our privacy settings, such as protecting the video with a password or restricting embedding to specific sites (a feature available exclusively to Vimeo paid members). You can read more about our various privacy settings at Overview of video privacy settings.

Note that there is currently no way to make videos available to download from the embedded player.

Storing and downloading your source files

Vimeo paid members have the ability to store their original, unencoded source files right here on Vimeo. This means that if you are on a paid account and you have enabled source file storage account settings, you will always be able to download your original file, as long as you maintain your paid subscription with us. You can choose to make your original file downloadable by others too. Learn more about enabling source file storage for your account at Store your source files on Vimeo. 

While Basic or Free members can indeed download the source files made available by any paid members, they do not have the ability to permanently store or share their own source files on Vimeo.