Download X videos on iPhone with Chrome

iPhone + Chrome at a glance

Device / OS

iPhone (iOS)

Browser

Chrome

File lands in

Files › On My iPhone › Chrome

Open your downloads

Chrome menu (⋯) › Downloads

Move to photos / gallery

Open in… › Save Video, right after the download

Plays in

Files (Quick Look), Photos once saved

Download an X video with Chrome on iPhone

1. Copy the X link. In the X app tap Share › Copy link, or long-press the address bar if you are on x.com in Chrome.
2. Extract in Chrome. Open TwitterDownloaderX in Chrome, paste the link and tap Extract.
3. Tap a quality. Chrome slides up a bar at the bottom: “Do you want to download user_…_720p.mp4?”. Tap Download.
4. Use Open in…. When it finishes, the bar changes to Open in…. Tap it to get the iOS share sheet.
5. Save Video. Choose Save Video in the share sheet. The clip goes straight into Photos.

Where the file ends up on iPhone

Chrome keeps every download in Files › On My iPhone › Chrome. It is local storage, not iCloud, so the file doesn't sync to your other devices and doesn't use iCloud space.

If you dismiss the bottom bar before tapping Open in…, nothing is lost. Open the Chrome menu › Downloads; that opens the same Chrome folder in Files, where you can long-press the video › Share › Save Video.

Chrome on iPhone: gotchas we ran into

• It isn't in Files › Downloads. People look in the Downloads folder Safari uses. Chrome's files are one level up, in the folder named Chrome.
• Incognito tabs. Downloads from an Incognito tab still go to the Chrome folder and remain after you close the tab.
• Same engine as Safari. Every iPhone browser uses Apple's WebKit, so playback and MP3 conversion support match Safari on the same iOS version.
• Deleting Chrome deletes the folder. If you uninstall Chrome, iOS removes its folder in Files with everything in it. Save clips you want to keep to Photos first.

After the download

Because Open in… hands the file to any app, you can also send it straight to WhatsApp, Telegram or a video editor without saving it to Photos first.

Chrome's downloads list shows the file name with the quality at the end, handy when you saved the same post in two sizes.

Other browsers on iOS

Chrome on iPhone runs on Safari's engine

Apple requires iOS browsers to use WebKit, the engine behind Safari, so Chrome for iPhone renders our page with the same engine as Safari. In practice that means two things for downloading. First, the MP3 button works or fails in Chrome exactly as it does in Safari on the same iOS version, because audio decoding comes from WebKit, not from Google's code. Second, any fix you read for Safari playback quirks applies here too.

What Chrome adds is its own download manager. Instead of the small arrow next to the address bar, Chrome shows a bar at the bottom with an Open in… button once the file finishes, and keeps a list under the ⋯ menu › Downloads. Files land in a Chrome folder inside Files › On My iPhone rather than in iCloud Drive, which is handy when iCloud storage is full.

Incognito tabs in Chrome don't keep our recent-downloads list: the list lives in your browser's local storage and is wiped when you close the Incognito tab. The downloaded files themselves stay in the Chrome folder until you delete them.

Questions people ask