Pinterest began in 2010 as a place to collect images, and its founders spent the first year persuading a few thousand people to use something nobody had asked for. What made it stick was that it was not really a social network. People were not performing for an audience; they were assembling boards for a kitchen they intended to renovate or a wedding eighteen months away.
That difference shaped everything after it. Pinterest is used as a planning tool, which is why its traffic spikes around Christmas, weddings and house moves rather than around news events. Video arrived properly with video pins and then Idea Pins in 2021, and slotted naturally into the same behaviour: a recipe or a technique is far clearer demonstrated than photographed.
The catch is that a pin is a pointer, not a possession. Boards are full of links that have quietly stopped working because the original site closed, the creator deleted the post, or the pin was taken down. People who have watched a carefully built board rot tend to want the actual files.
Why people save video pins
Dead pins are the reason most people arrive here. A board assembled over two years will always contain entries that lead nowhere, and the ones that break are rarely the ones you did not care about. A saved file cannot rot.
The second reason is that pins are needed in places where Pinterest is not. A recipe is wanted in the kitchen with no signal, a technique is wanted at a workbench, a workout is wanted at a gym with bad reception. Opening an app that wants to show you fourteen other things first is a poor substitute for a file that simply plays.
Then there are the people making things. Anyone gathering visual reference for a project ends up pulling material together in one folder rather than across a dozen boards, because a folder can be sorted, renamed and backed up, and a board cannot.
Saving a pin in four steps
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1
Copy the Pinterest pin address
Open the pin, tap the share arrow and choose Copy link. On a computer, take the pinterest.com address out of the browser bar. Short pin.it links from the share sheet are accepted too.
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2
Hand the Pinterest address to the box above
Paste it into the field at the top of this page. Reading begins as soon as the text lands, with nothing else to press.
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3
Choose the file you want
Video pins usually offer more than one size. Each is listed with its dimensions and weight so you can take the sharpest or the smallest, depending on what you need it for.
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4
Let it save
Tap the row once it turns blue. The file goes to Downloads on Android or the Files app on an iPhone, and it plays anywhere without conversion.
Pins, Idea Pins and what sits behind them
Pinterest hosts some media itself and merely points at the rest. What you can save depends entirely on which of those two a pin turns out to be.
| Kind of pin | Can it be saved? | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Video pin hosted by Pinterest | Yes | The straightforward case, usually in several sizes |
| Idea Pin | Yes, page by page | Each page is a separate clip rather than one long file |
| Pin linking to another site | Not from here | The video belongs to that site, so use its own address |
| Image-only pin | Nothing to download | There is no video behind a still pin |
| Secret board | No | Those need the account that created them |
The third row catches most people out. A great many pins are effectively adverts for a blog post, and the video plays from the blog rather than from Pinterest. Following the pin through to the source and pasting that address is the way around it.
Pinterest download questions
Can I save an Idea Pin?
Yes, but each page of it is a separate clip rather than one continuous video, so you will be saving them individually.
Do short pin.it links work?
They do. The share sheet produces them and they are accepted exactly like a full pinterest.com address.
Why does my pin have no video to download?
It is probably an image pin, or a pin whose video is actually hosted on the website it links to. Following it through to the source is the fix.
Can I download Pinterest from a secret board?
No. Secret boards belong to the account that made them and nothing here signs in.
Will the person who pinned it be notified?
No. Pinterest sends nothing for this, and no account is touched on our side.
Can I save a whole board at once?
No. Each pin has to be pasted on its own, because a board is a collection of addresses rather than a single item.
What quality should I expect on Pinterest?
Whatever was uploaded. Pinterest re-encodes video on upload like every other platform, so the largest option here is the best that exists rather than a reduced copy of something sharper.
Where does the file end up on a phone?
The Downloads folder on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
My pin address will not load, what now?
The pin has most likely been removed, which is common on older boards. A prepared link also expires if the page is left open a long time before you choose a file.
Is it alright to download pins?
For your own reference and planning, which is what the site is built for, this is uncontroversial. Republishing a creator's video as your own content is a different matter entirely, and that line is yours to respect.