How to Download Loom Videos as MP4, With the Audio

Loom is the default for async video in remote teams: a quick screen recording, a walkthrough, a client update. You record once, share a link, done. The problem starts when you need that video outside Loom: a client lost access, a teammate is leaving and their recordings go with the seat, or you want the clip inside your own editing timeline. The Download button is a paid feature shown only to the owner, and it is absent from every viewer-facing share page.

This guide covers how to download Loom videos in 2026 with two methods we test against the current Loom player: the manual DevTools path, and Vidora, our Chrome extension whose Loom support runs entirely in your browser, without any proxy or third-party server. Both produce a normal MP4 with audio, which is the part most other guides get wrong.

1. Why the Download button is missing

Loom ties downloading to plan tier and to ownership. On the free plan the Download entry is generally absent from the video menu; on Business and Enterprise it exists for the owner and can be switched off for the whole workspace by an admin. Viewers never get it: a share link at loom.com/share/{id} is meant to be watched in the Loom player, full stop.

None of this is a technical protection. Loom does not use Widevine, FairPlay or any other DRM. The player simply streams the recording like any HLS video, and whatever your browser can play, it can also save. The two methods below do exactly that, at the transport level, without touching Loom's servers in any way the player does not already.

2. Where the real video lives, and why so many downloads come out silent

This is the detail that separates a working download from a broken one. A Loom share page is server-rendered with a large JSON blob inside <script id="__NEXT_DATA__">, and that blob references two video files:

• The recording itself: an HLS master playlist named playlist-multibitrate.m3u8 on luna.loom.com. It lists several bitrates, and the video and audio tracks are separate renditions, Apple-style. The URL carries a signed query string (Policy, Signature, Key-Pair-Id) that expires.
• A preview: a short MP4 under cdn.loom.com/sessions/thumbnails/, a few seconds long, 0.5 to 1 MB, with no audio track. Loom uses it for Twitter and Facebook social cards.

Most "Loom downloader" tools and many tutorials grab the first .mp4 they find. The result is a silent clip of a few seconds, which is the number one complaint we see about Loom downloads. We hit the same trap while building Vidora's Loom support: the resolver now prefers the .m3u8 playlist whenever it is present and rejects anything under a thumbnails or preview path. If your downloaded Loom video has no sound, that is what happened to you. When the silent file did not come from Loom, the diagnostic guide for downloaded videos with no sound covers the other causes: separate audio renditions, TS audio codecs and sources that were mute to begin with.

If HLS playlists are new to you, our beginner guide to M3U8 and HLS streaming explains master playlists, renditions and segments in plain language. The short version: an M3U8 is a text file pointing at video chunks, and turning it into an MP4 is a copy operation, not a conversion.

3. Method 1: DevTools plus ffmpeg (manual, one-off downloads)

Works in Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox. Needs no extension and no Loom account, only ffmpeg, the free command-line tool available on Windows, macOS and Linux. Budget three to five minutes per video, and act quickly once you have the URL because the signature expires.

If the Network tab is unfamiliar, the step-by-step guide to finding any stream's M3U8 URL walks through it with screenshots. The Loom-specific part is knowing which request to pick.

Step-by-step: capture the Loom playlist and save it as MP4

1. Open the share page and DevTools. Go to loom.com/share/{id}, press F12 (Cmd + Opt + I on Mac), open the Network tab and type m3u8 in the filter box.
2. Press play. Within a second or two a request named playlist-multibitrate.m3u8 appears, hosted on luna.loom.com. That is the recording. If you also see .mp4 requests on cdn.loom.com under /sessions/thumbnails/, ignore them: that is the muted preview.
3. Copy the playlist URL. Right-click the request, Copy > Copy URL. Keep the whole query string; the Policy, Signature and Key-Pair-Id parameters are the access token.
4. Remux with ffmpeg. In a terminal:

   ffmpeg -i "PASTED_URL" -c copy loom-video.mp4

   ffmpeg reads the master playlist, selects the highest-resolution video stream and the audio stream, downloads the segments and writes an MP4. -c copy means no re-encoding: the file keeps Loom's original quality and the job runs at download speed, with no encoding pass.

Why the playlist URL works without logging in

Once Loom's server has decided you may view the page (public link, or you entered the password, or your session belongs to the workspace), it puts a signed playlist URL in the HTML. The signature is the authorization: any client that presents the URL before expiry gets the segments, which is how the player works and how ffmpeg works. This is the same model as pre-signed S3 or CloudFront URLs, and it is the reason the method needs no cookies and no account.

Want a general-purpose version of this workflow for other sites? The M3U8 to MP4 conversion guide covers the same ffmpeg remux, plus what to do when a playlist is AES-128 encrypted or when the audio is missing from the master.

4. Method 2: Vidora (one click, no DevTools)

Vidora is a Chrome extension with a dedicated Loom resolver. You open a share page, click the toolbar icon, and the popup lists the recording with a Download button. No Network tab, no copy-paste. The resolver captures the signed playlist URL when the share page loads; if you left the tab open long enough for the signature to expire, reload the tab before downloading. The extension is free during launch.

How the Loom resolver works, step by step

When a tab lands on loom.com/share/{id}, the extension fetches that page's HTML from your own browser session, scans it for the playlist-multibitrate.m3u8 URL, and deliberately discards any MP4 under a thumbnails or preview path. It then downloads the HLS segments, the best video rendition up to 1080p by default plus the audio rendition, and remuxes them into a single MP4 using the same copy operation ffmpeg performs. Nothing is re-encoded. When the playlist offers several resolutions, the popup shows a quality picker.

Everything runs on your machine: no external proxy, no API key, no scraping server, no third party that ever sees your share URL. That matters when the recording is an internal meeting, a client call or a demo of unreleased features. Your URL never leaves the browser. If you want the product-page view of this, the Vidora Loom downloader page lists what it does and does not do in one screen.

Step-by-step with Vidora

1. Install Vidora from the Chrome Web Store. It runs on Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers. No account, no email.
2. Open the Loom share page at loom.com/share/{id}. You do not need to press play; the resolver runs when the page loads.
3. Click the Vidora icon in the toolbar. The popup shows the recording's title and, when several exist, a resolution choice.
4. Click Download. The MP4 lands in your Downloads folder (or the subfolder you set in Vidora's options, available since version 1.0.59), with audio, at the original bitrate.

For several recordings, open each share page in its own tab and start the download from each popup. Downloads run independently of the tab: you can move on while they finish.

Vidora vs generic video downloaders and paste-a-link sites

Generic "video detector" extensions watch network traffic and surface whatever looks like a video. On a Loom page that produces two candidates, and the one that shows up first is usually the preview MP4, which is how people end up with a silent five-second file. Extensions that do handle HLS correctly then need to merge the separate audio rendition, and many skip that step. The comparison with Video DownloadHelper goes through these cases one by one.

Paste-a-link sites are the other common route, and Cap.so is the one people try first. They fetch the share page from their server, which is fine for a public link and impossible for anything behind a password or a workspace login, since your session cookies are not on their machine. Our Vidora vs Cap.so comparison lays out which situations a web service covers and which ones need an extension running inside your own session.

5. Edge cases: password-protected, workspace-only and embedded Loom videos

Password-protected Loom videos

The share page shows a password prompt before rendering any video metadata. Enter the password as a normal viewer. Once the player is on screen, the playlist URL is in the page and the DevTools method works exactly as described. Vidora is best-effort here, and honestly unlikely to help in the current build: its resolver fetches the share page HTML without your session cookies on the first attempt, so a password gate usually leaves the popup empty even after you unlock the page. Public share pages are verified end to end in our test suite; password-protected pages are not. Use DevTools for these.

Workspace-only (team-restricted) videos

These load only for a Loom account that belongs to the creator's workspace. If you see "Sign in to view" or "only available to workspace members", no tool can help; authentication is not something a downloader can or should bypass. If you are a member and the video plays in your browser, the DevTools method works, because the signed playlist URL is requested by the player either way. Vidora attempts it on the same best-effort basis as password-protected pages (its first fetch of the share page carries no cookies); if the popup stays empty after a reload, use DevTools.

Embedded Loom videos on third-party pages

Docs sites, course platforms and wikis embed Loom through an iframe pointing at loom.com/embed/{id}. Vidora's resolver targets share pages, so replace /embed/ with /share/ in the URL, open that address in a new tab and proceed. The ID is identical. For the DevTools method the embed page works too: the player inside the iframe requests the same playlist-multibitrate.m3u8, which shows up in the parent page's Network tab.

If the Loom is one lesson in a course you are archiving, the guide on saving online courses for offline access covers the platform side: Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific and the other hosts that wrap Loom or Vimeo players.

6. Legal and ethical considerations

Downloading video from the internet sits in a nuanced legal space. Here is a factual, neutral breakdown specific to Loom.

Your own recordings

Downloading your own Loom recordings is unconditionally fine. Loom's terms confirm you retain the rights to what you record. The Download button being hidden on some plans is a commercial UI decision, not a legal restriction on your own content.

Someone else's recording: the three questions

• Do you have legitimate access? If the share page requires a password or workspace membership and you have it, you are authorized to view the content. Saving a private copy of something you are allowed to watch is generally covered by fair use or private-copy doctrines in the US, EU and UK.
• Are you redistributing it? Re-uploading, publishing or sharing someone else's recording without permission is a copyright issue and often a confidentiality one. Downloaders, Vidora included, are for personal archiving.
• Is there DRM? Loom uses none. The stream is plain HLS over signed URLs. Neither ffmpeg nor Vidora circumvents encryption, and Vidora does not bypass DRM on any platform.

If the recording is an internal meeting, a client call or anything covered by an employment or client agreement, the question is whether you may keep that data, not which tool you use. The same framework applies to other hosts; the Vimeo download guide applies it to Vimeo's privacy settings.

7. Frequently asked questions