Where Are Facebook Videos Stored?

Facebook is an ever-changing platform, and it's not always easy to find the location of some of your content from one day to the next. User videos aren't prominently promoted on Facebook Timelines, but you can find them through the Photos section. Video clips that you've recently posted to Facebook also appear on your Timeline -- and the Timelines of people you've tagged -- and can appear in the News Feed too.

Finding Your Videos

You can browse to your Facebook Timeline to find the videos you've uploaded to the social network. One way of doing this is to click on your name to the left side of the main News Feed, choose "Photos," select "Albums," and then click the "Videos" option. Hover over a thumbnail to see two icons appear; choose the Play icon to watch the video or the Edit one -- marked with a pen symbol -- to make changes to the video, such as the caption and the people tagged in it.

Finding Other People's Videos

To see your Facebook friends' uploaded videos on their Timelines, open a friend's Timeline, choose "Photos," select "Albums," and then click "Videos" to see the clips. As these videos don't belong to you, you can only play them -- there is no option to make changes, though you can add a comment or a like. As with the other content on Facebook, videos have their own privacy settings, so you can only see clips if their approved audience includes you.

Mobile Devices

The Videos album is not available in Facebook's official mobile apps as of the latest versions available in January 2014, so you cannot view video content on your smartphone or tablet. Nor is it possible to view your video collections on the mobile version of Facebook's website. The limitations of video playback on mobile devices, together with the large amounts of bandwidth used to show video content, may be among the reasons why Facebook does not support the feature on mobile devices at this time.

Facebook's Data Centers

When you upload a video to Facebook, it is stored in the service's data centers located in various places across the world, along with all the other content posted on the social network. The video sent to Facebook may be optimized slightly for viewing on the Web, but the original file remains on your computer and isn't affected.