Needing to restore video files from Reddit is neither an unusual or isolated request nor a foreign matter. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of posts and comments daily. Reddit has one of the largest active online communities and is widely considered to be the best forum or message board out there. To put it into numbers, according to Statista, Reddit had 430 million active users in October 2021. During the trying times afterward, the user base surely grew by a bit, too. Now that you realize how large the demand for video rescue might be, let’s begin with how to recover Reddit videos.
1. Recover Reddit videos in the form of posts
We already went over multiple ways to restore deleted posts on Reddit, but with a primary focus on text-based content. Though the same methods apply for videos, there are several changes and some might be better than others.
1. Using Removeddit (now Unddit)
Removeddit used to be a highly successful service for the recovery of Reddit posts. However, its creator, Jesper Wrang, shut the website down around October 2021. Luckily, before he did so, he published an entire code to GitHub, and let others use his service, Pushshift.io. Consequently, some other websites picked up where he left off. One of those is Unddit. It’s even easier to use since you only have to switch re in the original URL with un.
For example, if the original URL is:https://www.REddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/bcxguf/new_to_pushshift_read_this_faq/
Simply turn it into:https://www.UNddit.com/r/pushshift/comments/bcxguf/new_to_pushshift_read_this_faq/
Like Removeddit, you can also add a bookmarklet from the Unddit home page, and click that item in your bookmarks bar to automatically open an Unddit version of the Reddit URL you opened. In both cases, you may see the video embedded on the page, as it was on Reddit, or simply a URL to a third-party hosting platform. Either way, you have a URL for direct or indirect (method 2 below) recovery.
2. Utilize Reveddit
As mentioned in the guide, Reveddit is similar to Removeddit and Unddit, but it has a key distinction: it also lets you search by Reddit username. This makes it possible to recover videos from Reddit whose URL you don’t know, by using the poster’s username instead. It also seems to work better when you search for a domain name, as some users tend to exclude “https://www”. With that said, the process is identical. Either paste the URL on the Reveddit.com page or merely add “ve” between “re” and “ddit” in the reddit.com URL.
3. Search for the video on Wayback Machine
Though you may think finding a snapshot of the page will be useless when it comes to videos, we can assure you it won’t. After all, you don’t truly need an embedded video that plays on the page directly. A broken player, a direct URL, the username of the poster, the date, who commented, and other information are invaluable. If you can’t find the video directly, you’ll nonetheless have a lot to work with. After all, you may resort to contacting all users on the post and asking whether they have the video.
4. Get Reddit videos back via Google Cache
As mentioned in the guide, this procedure is only really useful shortly after the video disappeared. It also must have been indexed by Google’s crawlers for it to appear in search results. Use it as a last recourse, and only if you found our guide quick enough for it to have merit.
2. Recover videos from Reddit using third-party downloader tools
This is where things take a turn, and what differentiates videos on Reddit from regular posts. To clarify, you neither have to rely on tools that scour Reddit nor trust Reddit to keep the video online. Have you ever searched for a way to download Reddit videos? Though you may find a direct link by inspecting elements or viewing the page source of a given page, less tech-savvy users often rely on third-party tools for downloading.
We won’t mention any by name, but there’s a wide array of them on the Internet. Moreover, you’ll undoubtedly have to try several before you strike gold. The gist of the method is that, if you have a direct URL, these tools can analyze it and spit out a direct download link. That’s a concept we just mentioned.
However, don’t forget these tools have a cache, and, to drastically boost loading time, memorize the generated URL you or someone else typed in the past. Thus, they don’t have to expend resources for repeated generation and can shoot out a download link almost immediately.
That’s your key to success—even if the video is removed from Reddit or third-party streaming services such as YouTube and Vimeo, a cached version might still exist. Once again, this largely depends on whether someone (including you) generated a download link in the past. You also have to be lucky to run into the right downloader service (a website or a desktop application).
3. Get Reddit videos back from storage via data recovery software
Users could upload videos to Reddit since August 2017, and, as we pointed out above, download videos from the tab or via unaffiliated tools to their devices or computers. The discrepancies in functionality and user interface (UI) between data restoration software for Windows and data rescue software for Android are few and far in-between compared to Mac or iOS. Though we have no affiliation, we’ll use EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for a demonstration on Windows. Here’s what to do:
- Download EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for Windows from the official website.
- Install and launch the software.
- Once it launches, you’ll see an interface similar to File Explorer. Select a drive on your computer and click on Scan. Otherwise, click on Can’t find location, then Scan to analyze the entire drive.
- Scanning may take a while, depending on the number of files it has to go through. You’ll now see three folders: “Deleted Files,” “Existing Files,” and “Lost Files”. We suggest checking all three.
- Use the search bar to narrow down the list of recovered files. For example, search for “mp4” or “my reddit video”.
- Once you find the file, click to highlight it.
- Click on Recover in the bottom right corner. Pick a location and wait for the recovery to finish.
For Android, take a look at the headline “Recovering your data on an Android phone without backup” in our guide on Android phone recovery post factory reset.
