Facebook added a nice feature on February 4, 2014 that shows a shot video of your best moments on Facebook since you joined the social network. That video is called the look back. You can see yours here: https://www.facebook.com/lookback
I enjoyed watching mine and was wondering how could I download that video or get an URL that I could share with my closest friends and family members. I was able to solve my problem looking into Facebook’s HTML source code. However, I imagined others would want to have their lookbacks too so I decided to create an easier solution for them.
Introducing the Download Facebook Look Back bookmarklet. Follow the next steps to get an URL for your look back:
- Drag that link to the bookmarks bar in your browser (View > Always Shows Bookmarks Bar to show the bar in Google Chrome).
- Go to your Facebook Look Back.
- Click the bookmarklet.
- Your browser should be redirected to the location of your Look Back video. The bookmarklet uses the HD url so, depending on your bandwidth, it may take a a few seconds or minutes before you see the video.
- To download your video use File > Save Page As.
If you are curious about what the bookmarklet does, here is the code:
(function() {
containers = document.getElementsByClassName('swfObject');
if (!containers || containers.length == 0) {
return;
}
embeds = containers[0].getElementsByTagName('embed');
if (!embeds || embeds.length == 0) {
return;
}
flashvars = embeds[0].getAttribute('flashvars');
url = decodeURIComponent(flashvars).replace(/.*?hd_src":"([^"]*)".*/, '$1');
a = document.createElement('a');
a.href = url.replace(new RegExp('\\/', 'g'), '/');
document.location.href = decodeURIComponent(a.href);
})();
You can copy the code and paste it in Google Chrome’s Developer Tools Console or equivalent in other browsers.
Comments
Sos un genio pibe! Great solution, thanks!