If you have loads of photos and videos uploaded to Facebook, you can upload a copy for several reasons: if you want to back up your data, if you want to close your Facebook account, etc.
Whatever the reason, there is an official way to download all Facebook data without using any third party apps, plugins or extensions. All of these sites require you to give someone else access to your Facebook account, which is risky in my opinion.
In this post, I’ll show you how you can download all of your Facebook data, which contains all of your photos and videos, and tons of other things. The nice thing is that it’s all very well organized and easy to navigate. It’s actually great to look at everything Facebook stores about you.
Download Facebook Photos / Videos
To upload your Facebook data, log into Facebook and click the little blue arrow in the upper right corner of the screen. At the bottom of the menu, click Settings.
In the “General Account Settings” section at the bottom you will see a link “Download a copy of your Facebook data”.
Click on this link and you will receive a short description of what data your archive will contain. To start archiving, click the green Start My Archive button.
Another pop-up will appear in which you must confirm that you want to download your archive.
After confirmation by clicking on the second button “Start my archive”, you will see a message that you will receive an email after the archive is complete. After a while, you will receive an email with a link to your archive.
Click the link and you will see a button titled “Download my archive”. You will need to re-enter your Facebook password again before you can download the archive.
Depending on how much you upload to Facebook, your archive can be several hundred megabytes in size. The archive will be in ZIP format, so you need to unzip it first to see the contents.
The archive is divided into three sections: html, photos and videos. The html folder contains all your posts, locations, tags, etc. in HTML format that you can view in your web browser.
The Photos folder contains all of your downloaded photos and synced photos from your mobile phone. The only thing is that each album is represented by the number code used by Facebook, not the name of your album.
It’s a little annoying if you have hundreds of Facebook albums, because you’ll have to open each folder, see what images are inside, and then rename the folder. If you just want a copy of everything, that’s okay.
The video folder contains all the videos you uploaded in MP4 format. As far as I can tell, Facebook uploads don’t give you the original permission of the files you originally uploaded, which is a little annoying. It could also be due to the fact that my photos and videos were uploaded before Facebook had the option to upload in high definition.
However, even with the high resolution option, Facebook will resize or compress your images and videos if they are larger than 2048 pixels or 100 KB, or larger than 1280 pixels wide for videos. For videos and pictures, make sure you set the Upload to HD option in your Facebook app by selecting More, then Settings, then Account Settings, and then Videos & Photos.
If you click the index.htm file, which is in the same folder as photos, videos and html, you will be able to view all this information in your web browser in a convenient format. You can see your information, everything that is written on your wall, your friends, messages, posts, events and much more.
You will also see additional information about the photos, such as location, camera make, camera model, ISO sensitivity, etc.
Overall, this is the safest and best way to download all of your Facebook photos and videos without giving any other random company access to your account. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to leave comments. Enjoy!
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