Tumblr opened in February 2007, built by a nineteen-year-old and one collaborator over a fortnight. It sat between blogging and social networking: posts were short, reblogging carried them outward, and there was no obligation to attach your real name to any of it. Yahoo bought it in 2013 for a billion dollars and spent the following years struggling to explain what it had acquired.
The culture that grew there was unlike anywhere else. Fandoms, artists, essayists and subcultures built dense communities around reblog chains rather than follower counts, and a post could keep circulating for years, picking up commentary at every step. Long after the company's commercial fortunes turned, that social fabric stayed intact.
It is also a notoriously fragile archive. Blogs are deleted in a moment, and when one goes every post it originated goes too — including from the thousands of blogs that reblogged it, which are left holding broken frames. Anyone who has been there a while has watched an entire thread evaporate because one person closed an account.
Saving video from a Tumblr post
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1
Copy the Tumblr post link
Use the share arrow on the post and copy the link, or take the address straight from your browser. Both the blogname.tumblr.com form and the newer tumblr.com/blogname style are accepted, as are custom domains.
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2
Feed it to the field at the top
Paste the address into the box above. It begins reading the moment the text lands.
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Choose what is offered
Tumblr stores video in a small number of sizes, each listed with its weight. GIF-style posts are frequently video underneath, and download that way.
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Hold on to the file
Tap the row once it turns blue. Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone, no conversion required.
Why Tumblr posts disappear so completely
Reblogging looks like copying but it is not. Every reblog points back at the original post, so the chain depends entirely on the first blog continuing to exist.
| What happens | Effect on the video | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Original blog deleted | Gone from every reblog | The chain pointed at a source that no longer exists |
| Post deleted by its author | Gone from every reblog | Same reason, one post rather than a whole blog |
| Blog set to private | Invisible to visitors | Only the owner can see it now |
| Reblog deleted | Original unaffected | Only that one copy in the chain goes |
| Video embedded from elsewhere | Depends on that site | The file was never Tumblr's to begin with |
This is why saving from Tumblr feels more urgent than from most places. A ten-year-old post with forty thousand notes is one account deletion away from being a row of broken images across every blog that ever touched it.
Why people save Tumblr video
Loss, mostly. Anyone with a long-running blog has watched favourite posts break as the blogs behind them closed, and there is no recovery and no archive to appeal to. A local file is the only form that survives somebody else's decision.
Artists and fandoms are the other large group. A great deal of original animation, edits and short work was posted to Tumblr and nowhere else, and the people who care about it are often the only ones keeping copies at all.
There is also the ordinary reason. A clip is easier to send to somebody who does not use Tumblr as a file than as a link into a reblog chain that will make no sense to them.
Tumblr download questions
Do custom domain Tumblr blogs work?
Yes. Many Tumblr blogs run on their own domain and those addresses are handled the same way.
Can I save video from a reblog?
Yes, provided the original post still exists. If the source blog has gone, the video has gone from every reblog with it.
Are Tumblr GIFs really video?
Many are. The platform converts larger animations to video for performance, so what looks like a GIF often downloads as an MP4.
What about a password-protected blog?
No. Those require the password, and nothing here signs in.
Can I download a whole blog?
No. Each post needs its own address. Tumblr's own export tool is the right route for backing up a blog you own.
Why do so many old posts show broken video?
Because the original blog or post was deleted. Reblogs point at the source rather than holding their own copy.
Will the blogger be notified?
No. Nothing is reported and no account is involved here.
Where does the file land?
Downloads on Android, the Files app on an iPhone.
A Tumblr link that worked has stopped.
The post or the blog behind it has almost certainly been deleted, which is the usual fate of older Tumblr content.
Is it alright to save from Tumblr?
A great deal of Tumblr is original creative work by people who are easy to find and happy to be credited. Keeping a copy is fine; reposting it stripped of its source is the thing that reliably causes trouble there.