Plus members and higher have the option to enable their videos for download. If you have a Basic membership, your viewers will not be able to download your videos; if you upgrade your account, the option for enabling downloads will be automatically turned on.
Here's a short video about how downloading works on Vimeo:
In this article:
- Downloading videos
- Disabling the ability to download your videos
- Storing and downloading your source files
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, including a mobile, SD, and/or HD file. 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."
Disabling the ability to download your videos
If you’d rather not have your videos be 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 toggle 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), 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 Vimeo Plus members and higher). You can read more about our various privacy settings here.
Note that there is currently no way to make videos available to download from the embedded player.
Storing and downloading your source files
Plus members and higher 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 here.
While Basic members can indeed download the source files made available by Plus, Pro, Business, Premium, and Enterprise members, they do not have the ability to permanently store or share their own source files on Vimeo.