January 13, 2012

How to download videos from an Android Browser?

Once I wrote about how you can use Real Player Beta to download videos on your Android Phone. That process has a limitation. You can download only those videos that require a video player to stream, if you are using Real Player. You cannot download and save videos that play in the browser itself, using Real Player.
Often we come across great videos online that we would love to download and keep. If we are using a laptop or a PC, we can download the videos that play in the browser using Real Player Plugin. But can you do the same thing if you are using a smartphone to download a video?
I am a proud Android User. I believe that you can do anything that you do on a Windows PC on Android. If you badly want to do something on your Android Phone, there will be an app somewhere for that. That is exactly what I thought when my Twitter friend Allen Reza asked if there is a way to download videos that play in the browser on an Android phone. And I set out to figure out how to do it. And boy, I figured a way out.
You can download videos that play in your Android Phone Browser, if you follow my instructions carefully.
1. Go to Android Market and download Spool.  Spool is an application that allows you to download web pages if you want to read them offline. You can download Spool from here.
2. Open a web page with  videos on your browser. Click the share button in your browser to bring up all those applications that enable you to share. You will find Spool in that list. Click on Spool to save the webpage.
3. Once your webpage is saved to Spool, make sure that you download the entire page on your phone. Once you do this, Spool saves the video as an mp4 file in the sd card of your phone. You can already view the video offline.
4. Sometimes we may want to save a video and delete the webpage. If you use the stock file manager in your Android Phone, you will not be able to find out the folder in which Spool saves the video. This way you may have to keep the entire webpage for the video. Thankfully there is a work around, if you want to keep only the video or move it to your external memory card. Go to Android Market and download the Astro File Manager. 
5. As I told you, Spool keeps its folder hidden. Once you download Astro File Manager, enable it to show hidden files. You will see the .spool folder. Open the spool folder and find out the folder in which the video is saved. Copy the video file and move it to your external memory card.
6. You can now go back to Spool and delete the webpage from your device to save space. Your video will be safe in your external memory card.

Update: Please note that spool is removed from the android market and you cannot download videos anymore. 

12 comments:

  1. did not work at all on my tab p1000

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DEAR GO HERE ITS VERY EASY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE6JcLliVXg&feature=youtu.be

      Delete
  2. Hi Anonymous, I hope u synced spool before you opened the hidden folder :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have an optimus s will it work
    Ps. Its rooted too

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice post. Great blog. Thanks for the share. Keep posting such a kind of information on your blog. I bookmarked it for continuous visit.
    html5 media player

    ReplyDelete
  5. When I went to the Facebook page containing the video that I want to download and hit share in the browser like you instructed, spool came up but when I selected it, I got a message saying "no link found". I have a Samsung Galaxy II, can you help?

    Stephanie

    ReplyDelete
  6. Spool not supposed facebook takeover

    ReplyDelete
  7. you can download any flash videos into your android phone just go here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE6JcLliVXg&feature=youtu.be

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's also a good solution, but unfortunately, the YouTube API doesn't support sending messages to a Video player for Mac. If this option was available, I would have implemented what you suggested.

    ReplyDelete
  9. hey guys , please i really need a fast answer , does spool download videos directly to the external memory card. i have samsung galaxy s2

    ReplyDelete
  10. thanks for the nice info you have shared about the download youtube videos on android

    ReplyDelete
  11. Acethinker video downloader lets you download videos from any websites not just Youtube. You just need to copy the video URL into the app box, and then click the Download button. The app will analytic the video and start the download process automatically.
    https://acethinker.com/online-downloader

    ReplyDelete

What do you think of what
I wrote?

How to prevent ad-type.google.com from ruining your reading experience?

Ad-type.google.com is a nuisance. It is the meanest possible click fraud one would ever encounter online. It affects your browsing experien...