How to Download Mastodon Videos on iPhone

Mastodon has grown into a real home for people who left the bigger networks, and a lot of good video lives there now that you won't find anywhere else. You spot a clip worth keeping, you go to save it, and Mastodon gives you nothing. There's no download button and no save option, just the post sitting there. Long pressing the video does nothing useful either.

I've made TVDL since 2018, and I built the Mastodon support myself, partly because so many downloaders quietly skip it. This guide shows the free way to save a Mastodon video straight to your iPhone Camera Roll. The first time takes a couple of minutes. After that it's a couple of taps.

The quick answer

Copy the Mastodon post link, open the iOS share sheet, and run TVDL, a free iOS Shortcut. It follows the link to whatever server the post lives on, fetches the video through its own system, and drops the original file into your Photos. There's no app to install and no watermark. Nothing of yours is uploaded: TVDL fetches the video, gets it ready, and never keeps a copy. If you'd rather paste a link in a browser, the web-based Mastodon video downloader does the same job.

Why Mastodon is a little different

This is the part worth understanding, because it's the reason so many tools leave Mastodon out.

Mastodon isn't one website. It's thousands of independent servers, called instances, that all talk to each other. A post you're reading might live on mastodon.social, or on a tiny community server run by one person, or on anything in between. There's no single mastodon.com to point a downloader at, so a lot of tools only support the big centralized platforms and skip the whole thing.

TVDL handles it by reading the shape of the link rather than looking for one specific site. Whatever server the post is on, as long as it's public, TVDL can follow it, find the video, and pull the original file. You don't need an account on that server, and it doesn't matter which instance you use yourself.

Adding the shortcut the first time

You only do this once. Get the free TVDL shortcut by entering your email, and we send you the link. Open that link on your iPhone, tap Add Shortcut, and it drops into your Shortcuts app and your share sheet for good. There's nothing to download from an app store and no account to create.

The first time you run it, iOS asks for permission to read the link and save to your Photos. Tap Allow once and it stops asking. From then on, saving a video is just Share, then TVDL.

How to save a Mastodon video on iPhone step by step

These steps match the quick how-to at the top of the page.

1. Copy the post link. Open the post on your Mastodon instance. Unlike X or Bluesky, there's no share icon under the video, so tap the three-dot menu in the corner of the post and choose Copy link to post. In Safari, you can copy the post URL from the address bar instead.
2. Run TVDL. Tap Share and choose TVDL in the share sheet, or open the Shortcuts app, run TVDL, and paste the link when it asks. Either way works.
3. Let TVDL read the post. It follows the link to whichever server the post lives on and pulls the original video. Any public post on any instance works, so it doesn't matter whether it's a huge server or a small one.
4. Save to Photos. The video lands in your Camera Roll within a few seconds. Open Photos to confirm, then share or edit it like any other clip.

Save a Mastodon video from Safari

If you read Mastodon in Safari rather than an app, you can skip the copy step. Open the post, tap the Share icon in the Safari toolbar, scroll the share sheet, and tap TVDL. It grabs the current page link on its own and saves the video. This is handy when someone sends you a Mastodon link in Messages and you just want to keep the clip.

What it can and can't reach

I'd rather be straight with you than oversell it, so here's the honest part.

TVDL only works on public posts, the ones anyone can open without logging in. It can't reach a post set to followers only or a private one, because it can only see what a logged-out visitor can see. If the instance the post lives on is down or unreachable, the download won't work until that server is back. And this is an iPhone and iPad guide: the shortcut needs Apple's Shortcuts app, so it doesn't run on Android or Windows.

Mastodon serves one processed version of each video rather than a menu of resolutions, so you get the quality that server published. For the odd post that comes out lower than you expected, TVDL Pro runs extra engines and picks the best available result.

It saves X and Bluesky too

Mastodon isn't the only place TVDL works. The same shortcut saves video from X (Twitter) and Bluesky, so once it's set up you can pull a clip from any of them the same way. If a platform ever changes something and a download breaks, we ship fixes fast. The help center lists any current known issues, and you can subscribe below to get the fix the moment it lands.

Add the free shortcut below and save your first Mastodon video in the next couple of minutes.