How to Save Vods on Twitch on iPhone

Most people arrive at this question a few days too late. You streamed something worth keeping, you go back for it, and Twitch has already deleted it. Or the VOD is still there and the Twitch iPhone app has no download button anywhere, because the download lives in a part of Twitch that the mobile app does not include.

I run Grabio, a free iPhone Shortcut, and its role in this is entirely at the end, after you have a file. The saving itself is done through Twitch’s own tools, and getting to them from an iPhone takes a specific detour that I will walk through. Before any of that there is a setting that matters more than everything else on this page.

The setting that decides whether a VOD exists at all

Twitch does not automatically keep a recording of your stream. There is a switch called Store past broadcasts, and if it is off, the stream simply ends and nothing is saved. A large number of people discover this the first time they go looking for a broadcast that was never recorded.

Turn it on in the Creator Dashboard, under the settings for your stream. On a phone you will need the desktop version of the site, which I cover in a moment. Do it once and forget about it.

Even with it on, Twitch keeps past broadcasts for a limited window that depends on your account type, and it has revised those numbers more than once over the years.

Check Twitch’s own help pages for the current retention rather than trusting any blog post, including this one. The practical takeaway is the same either way: a VOD you care about should be downloaded within days, not weeks.

Highlights and Clips do not expire the same way

This is the part that saves people. Before a VOD expires, you can turn the parts you care about into a Highlight, and Highlights are kept rather than being on the same deletion timer as raw broadcasts. Same for Clips, which viewers and you can make from a live stream or a VOD, and which stick around.

So the cheap insurance is: after a stream, spend five minutes making Highlights of the sections that matter. Even if you never download anything, the content survives. I wrote up the Clip side separately in downloading Twitch clips on iPhone.

Downloading your own VOD from an iPhone

The download button lives in Video Producer, which is part of the Creator Dashboard, and the Twitch mobile app does not include it. The workaround is to use Safari and ask for the desktop site.

1. Open Safari and go to twitch.tv, then sign in.
2. Tap the aA button on the left of the address bar and choose Request Desktop Website.
3. Navigate to your Creator Dashboard, then Content, then Video Producer.
4. Find the broadcast, open its three dot menu, and choose Download.

The desktop layout on a phone screen is genuinely unpleasant. Everything is small, the menus are dense, and you will be pinching to zoom constantly. It does work. Turning the phone sideways helps more than you would think.

The file is an MP4 and it goes to Files rather than Photos, usually into Downloads. A long broadcast is a very large file, so make sure you are on wifi and have the storage free before you start. Twitch also processes some downloads before serving them, so a big VOD may not begin immediately.

If you have access to a laptop at any point, use it for this step. The iPhone route exists for when you do not, and it is the harder path.

Export to YouTube instead

Video Producer has an export option that sends a VOD directly to a connected YouTube account. This is often the better answer, because it moves the video somewhere permanent without ever passing through your phone or your data allowance.

From YouTube you can set it unlisted, keep it as an archive, and download it later from YouTube Studio if you actually need the file. For anybody streaming regularly, this is the archiving strategy I would suggest over downloading each one.

Somebody else’s VODs

Twitch’s terms ask you not to download content outside the features Twitch provides, and the broadcast belongs to the streamer regardless. Subscriber only VODs sit behind a payment, and I am not going to write instructions for getting around that.

The route Twitch does support is clipping. Anyone can make a Clip from a stream or a VOD, the streamer gets attribution, and the clip is a permanent object you can come back to. If you want to keep a moment from somebody else’s stream, that is the mechanism built for it.

If you want a full broadcast from a streamer you know, asking them is not a strange thing to do. They have a download button and you do not.

Shrinking the file once you have it

A multi hour VOD at full quality is enormous, and this is where Grabio does its work, on a file already in Files or Photos.

• Trim first. Cutting a four hour stream down to the twelve minutes you care about is the biggest saving available and it happens in Photos, before any conversion. Trimming a video on iPhone without an app covers the handles and the Save as New Clip option.
• Compress. Run Grabio and pick the compress option on the trimmed clip. If the destination is Discord, compressing a video for Discord deals with the specific size limits there.
• Extract the audio. For a talk heavy stream, the soundtrack alone is a fraction of the size and it is what you actually wanted. See extracting audio from a video on iPhone.
• Make a GIF. For a short reaction moment, a GIF is the right format and Grabio will produce one from a clip.

If the trimmed file is still too big to send, sending a large video file from an iPhone goes through the link based options that avoid the whole problem.

What I would set up if I streamed

Store past broadcasts on. Highlights made the same evening, while you still remember what happened. Auto export to YouTube as unlisted for the archive. Then download only the ones you are actually going to edit, from a computer if you have one, trim them in Photos, and use Grabio on the phone to compress whatever you want to share.

Get the Shortcut if the compressing and audio extraction is the part that keeps eating your evening.

Questions people ask

Why has my Twitch VOD disappeared?

Either Store past broadcasts was off, so nothing was recorded, or the retention window for your account type ran out and Twitch deleted it. The window depends on your account and Twitch has changed it before, so check their current help pages. Highlights and Clips are not on the same timer.

Can I download a Twitch VOD from the mobile app?

No. The download lives in Video Producer inside the Creator Dashboard, and the Twitch iOS app does not include that area. Open twitch.tv in Safari, tap the aA button, choose Request Desktop Website, and work through the dashboard from there.

Where does a downloaded VOD go on an iPhone?

Into the Files app, normally in Downloads, since it is an MP4 arriving through Safari rather than through Photos. Open Files and check Recents if you cannot find it. You can move it into Photos afterwards if you want to trim it in the Photos editor.

How do I keep a moment from somebody else’s stream?

Make a Clip. It is the feature Twitch built for exactly this, it credits the streamer, and clips are kept rather than expiring with the broadcast. Downloading a full VOD from another channel goes against Twitch’s terms, and subscriber only content sits behind a payment.

My VOD is far too big to send. What now?

Trim it in Photos down to the section you actually want, then run Grabio and compress the result. If it is still too large, use a link based method such as Mail Drop or a cloud folder rather than an attachment, since most email providers reject anything past roughly 25 megabytes.

Is there a way to archive every stream automatically?

Connect a YouTube account in Video Producer and use the export option. Uploads land on YouTube where they are not on a deletion timer, and you can keep them unlisted. That keeps the archive off your phone entirely, and you can pull the file from YouTube Studio later if you need it.