Save a Facebook Story while it is live

Content published with an end time attached

Almost everything else on Facebook stays up until somebody removes it. A Story is the exception. It is published with roughly twenty-four hours of life, and at the end of that window Facebook stops serving it to viewers. The clock starts when the Story is posted, not when you find it.

That single fact governs this whole page. Every other question about Stories, including which address to copy and why an attempt failed, comes back to whether the platform is still handing the file out at the moment you press Analyze.

What an expired address hands back

An address you copied yesterday still looks correct today. The host is right, the identifier is right, and nothing about the text tells you the Story behind it is gone. Facebook keeps the address shape valid and simply stops attaching a file to it.

Analyze opens that page and finds no video being served, so the results list comes back empty. That empty list is the accurate answer rather than a fault at this end. No downloader reaches a file the platform has stopped publishing, and no setting on this site changes that.

Checking the Story is still up before you paste

Open the address in a fresh browser tab first. A live Story plays. An expired one shows you a message, sends you to the author's profile, or drops you at a sign-in form, and any of those three is the answer before you have used a download.

Doing that check in a private window is worth the extra second, because it also shows you what a signed-out viewer receives. Vidzilla reads every page signed out, so a private window is a close match for what happens when you press Analyze.

• Start a private or incognito browser window.
• Paste the Story address and press Enter.
• A Story that plays with nobody signed in can be read here.
• A profile page, a sign-in form, or an error message means the window has closed.

Copying the address while the Story is on screen

Stories advance on their own, which makes the copy step harder than it is elsewhere. Hold your finger on the screen, or hover the pointer, to pause the sequence, then open the menu on that Story and choose the option that copies a link.

A Story address carries an identifier for one card in the sequence. If a person posted five cards this morning, each one has its own address, and copying the first gets you the first rather than the set. Pause on the card you actually want before you copy anything.

Timing a save so the window does not close on you

Treat a Story as work to finish now. Copy the address and paste it in the same few minutes rather than saving the link to deal with later, because a link parked overnight is a link that expires. A Story posted at breakfast is gone by breakfast tomorrow.

The prepared file on this site also runs on a short timer, so keep the tab open once you press Download file and let the transfer finish. After that, the copy is on your own device and the platform's clock stops mattering. Free use covers 3 downloads a day, the count resets at midnight UTC, and one file may be up to 150 MB. A Story is short and sits well inside that. Pro removes the count, the ceiling, and the ads.

Whose Story you are allowed to keep

Your own Stories are yours, and saving them before they expire is the ordinary reason people use this page. Somebody else's Story was published to an audience they chose for a day, and keeping a copy beyond that day does not come with their agreement. Vidzilla has no relationship with Facebook and cannot give permission on a poster's behalf.

Related pages

• Facebook posts, Pages and Reels
• The same twenty-four hour job on Instagram
• Testing an address before you commit a download to it
• Reels, which stay up rather than expiring