How to Download a Backup of All of Your Facebook Photos and Videos in a Few Easy Steps

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 3.52.27 PM

Facebook may not be your main photo storage solution (at least we hope it’s not), but knowing how to download a backup of all the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to and shared through the service is still a useful skill to keep tucked away in your Internet toolbox.

Fortunately, the social network actually has a very straightforward, secure and simple system in place so you can download a backup of all your photos, videos, messages and posts in just a few simple steps.

First you need to go to your Facebook Settings where you should be greeted by a page that looks like this:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 3.50.20 PM

From there, click on the ‘Download a copy’ hyperlink at the bottom to begin the process. Once you do, you’ll be redirected to the screen shown below where you’ll click on ‘Start My Archive’:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 3.50.22 PM

Then, once you’ve verified your identity by reentering your password, you’ll click through a couple of more dialog boxes to confirm before receiving an email that looks something like this:

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 3.50.55 PM

It’s smooth sailing from that point on. Depending on how much data you have stored on Facebook, it could take a while to receive the next email, but within a couple of hours at the most, you’ll get one more email with a download link for a .zip file that contains everything you’ve uploaded to the service.

Screen Shot 2014-08-15 at 3.52.09 PM

Again, chances are good nobody reading this is using Facebook as their sole means of photo storage, but an extra backup is never a bad thing.

Just one more failsafe in case you somehow lose every other backup, or you want to make sure that the family photos or personal snaps you’ve only ever shared through FB don’t somehow disappear for good… we all know how sad that can be.

Discussion