An iPhone Shortcut for X videos

In short

Actions

2: Receive URLs from Share Sheet → Open URLs

Time to build

About a minute

Runs from

The Share button in the X app or Safari

Breaks when X changes?

No: extraction happens on our site

Step by step

1. Create a new Shortcut. Open Shortcuts › + › name it “Save X video”.
2. Accept shared links. Tap the info (ⓘ) button › turn on Show in Share Sheet; set it to receive URLs only.
3. Add a URL action. Add the URL action with https://twitterdownloaderx.com/?url= followed by the Shortcut Input variable.
4. Add Open URLs. Add Open URLs after it. Done.
5. Use it. On any X post tap Share › Save X video. Safari opens with the post extracted; tap a quality.

Why this design

Most downloader Shortcuts contain their own scraping logic and stop working whenever X changes its pages. Ours passes the link to twitterdownloaderx.com/?url=…; the homepage reads that parameter and starts extraction immediately, so fixes on our side apply to your Shortcut too.

It also needs no special permissions beyond opening a web page, which you can verify by reading its two actions.

Going one step further: straight to Photos

You can extend it with Get Contents of URL on the direct media link and Save to Photo Album, but that requires copying the direct URL from the result card each time. For most people the two-action version plus Share › Save Video is faster in practice.

Troubleshooting the Shortcut

• It doesn't appear in the Share sheet: scroll to the end of the app row and tap Edit Actions, then add it to Favorites. Check that the shortcut accepts URLs.
• Safari opens but the box is empty: the URL action must contain the Shortcut Input variable right after ?url=, with no space in between.
• It opens Chrome instead of Safari: Open URLs uses your default browser. That's fine; the page works the same in Chrome for iOS.
• You'd rather not open the browser: that requires a far more complex shortcut that parses X data itself, exactly the kind that breaks. The two-action version trades one extra tap for reliability.
• You can also run the Shortcut from the Shortcuts app itself by copying a link first and choosing the clipboard as input, which helps when an app has no Share button.

Using it from apps other than X

Any app that shares an X link through the iOS Share sheet can run the Shortcut: Safari, Messages, Mail or a chat app where a friend sent you the post. The Shortcut only forwards the text of the link, so it works the same everywhere.

Questions people ask