Two months ago I published a post here with the title “social downloads are out, Grabio Pro is in.” Today I am reversing both halves of that sentence.

Grabio 2.0 is live. Social downloads are back. And the whole thing is 100% free — no Pro, no account, no limits, forever.

Install / update: grabio.adityaarsharma.com/get-shortcut

What changed, honestly

The old story was simple: I built a social-media downloader, then every payment processor declined me because card networks treat downloaders as high-risk. So I ripped downloads out and launched a $3/month Pro tier to cover server costs.

Here is the thing I missed at the time. The reason downloads were a payments problem was that I was doing the downloading on my server. If Grabio never touches the video — if it just sends you to a clean, existing website that does it — then there is nothing risky on my side. And if I am not running heavy servers, there is nothing to charge you for either.

So I rebuilt Grabio around that idea. Both problems disappeared at once.

How Grabio 2.0 works now

Share a link → download from 100+ platforms

Share a link from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest — or 100+ other sites — to Grabio. It copies the link to your clipboard and opens a clean, ad-free downloader — you tap Paste, then download. YouTube goes up to 4K. No watermarks, no fake buttons, no malware. I vetted the destinations myself; Grabio never routes you to a sketchy site.

Grabio itself never downloads or stores anything. It just hands you to the right clean tool.

Share a file → convert it on your iPhone

Share a photo, video, audio file or PDF and Grabio converts it on your device using Apple’s own tools. Nothing is uploaded. This covers HEIC → JPG/PNG, compress, resize, crop to square, remove background, strip location (EXIF), photo → PDF, Live Photo → GIF, extract audio, and make a QR code. For the few things iOS can’t do locally (merging PDFs, exotic format conversions), it opens a clean tool for that too.

Privacy, for real this time

The old Grabio uploaded your files to a server in Germany, processed them, and deleted them within an hour. Grabio 2.0 removes the upload entirely:

  • Your files never leave your iPhone. Conversions run on-device. There is nothing on my side to see, store or leak.
  • Your links never reach my server. Grabio copies the link to your clipboard; you paste it on the download site — it is never put in a request to me.
  • No account, no email, no phone number, no device tracking.
  • The only thing I ever record is an anonymous count of how many times a download page was opened — a number, with nothing attached to it.

What happened to Grabio Pro

It is retired. There is no paid tier anymore, no subscription, and nothing to buy. Anyone who was ever subscribed has been cancelled, and everything Pro used to lock — background remove, all of it — is now free for everyone. If you were ever charged and think something is outstanding, email me and I will sort it out.

Why free actually works this time

The $3 tier existed to pay for servers that processed every file. Grabio 2.0 does conversions on your phone and sends downloads to tools that were already free. My server barely does anything now — it hands out the Shortcut and counts an anonymous hit. There is almost no cost to cover, so there is no reason to charge you. No ads, no data resale, no investors. Just a free tool.

How to install (or update from an older version)

  1. On your iPhone, open Safari and go to grabio.adityaarsharma.com/get-shortcut.
  2. Tap Add Shortcut.
  3. If you had an older Grabio, delete it first — 2.0 is a clean, self-contained rebuild.
  4. To use it: open any link or file → tap Share → Grabio.

To everyone who used the old downloader and got the “feature removed” message, and to everyone who paid for Pro to support the project — thank you. This is the version I wish I had shipped the first time. It is simpler, more private, and free for good.

Built independently. Not affiliated with Apple. Built in India.

— Aditya · [email protected]