Where are downloaded videos stored on Android?

Last reviewed: September 28, 2026 · Markdown version

It depends on what did the downloading. A video you saved from a web page is an ordinary file in your downloads. A film or clip you downloaded inside a streaming app for offline viewing is not a file you can browse to at all — you find it, play it and delete it from inside that app.

Saved from a browser: look in Download

Chrome's Android help covers video explicitly — "On some video and audio files, tap Download" — and says the result goes to "your default download location" (Download a file, Android, read 28 September 2026). On a Galaxy, Samsung's own browser has a different gesture for it: "While playing a video using Popup Video or Video history, touch and hold the screen, select the Save video option, and then the video will be downloaded" (Frequently asked questions about Samsung Browser, read 28 September 2026).

A detail from Android's developer guide explains why such a video can seem to be missing from the places you look for videos. It lists video files as those "stored in the DCIM/, Movies/, and Pictures/ directories", and downloads separately, as files "stored in the Download/ directory" (Access media files from shared storage, read 28 September 2026). So a downloaded clip sits with your other downloads, not beside your camera videos. In Google's Files app you can narrow the pile: open a category, then "To sort by name, date, or size, tap a file category More Sort by" (Find & delete files on a Google Pixel phone or Pixel Tablet, read 28 September 2026) — our tip is to sort by size, since videos tend to be the largest files in the list.

Downloaded inside YouTube, Netflix and other apps

These stay with the app. Samsung's support page says so plainly: "Some apps, such as Netflix, store their downloads securely on your phone and are only available through the app itself", and it gives the usual reason — "This is most commonly due to copyright restrictions" (Where to find downloaded files & my files folder on Samsung phone, Samsung UK, read 28 September 2026). Google's Pixel help gives the matching instruction: "go to the app where you downloaded it" (Pixel Files page above).

YouTube. With Premium, tap your profile picture and, "In your Library under Recents, select the Downloads playlist". Downloads need a connection now and then: "Downloaded videos can be played offline for up to 29 days" (Watch videos offline with YouTube Premium, Android, read 28 September 2026).
Netflix. Open the app and select Downloads. Netflix ties them to the phone: "Downloaded TV shows and movies are available on the device that was used to download them", and "If you cancel your account, downloads on your device will be deleted" (How to download titles to watch offline, Netflix Help Center, read 28 September 2026).

Both apps can put new downloads on an SD card instead of internal storage (Download YouTube videos to an SD card, read 28 September 2026; How to store downloads on an SD card, Netflix Help Center, read 28 September 2026) — the steps are on this page. Neither of those two pages says which folder on the card the files go into; both are silent on it. Our reading is that Samsung's copyright line above is the reason it does not matter: the download is for the app's player, not for your file manager. How Android fences off an app's own storage is explained separately.

Videos you recorded or were sent

Clips you recorded yourself are in the video folders that Android's developer guide names — DCIM/, Movies/ or Pictures/. Clips that arrived in a chat follow that app's own layout — WhatsApp's is here — and screen recordings are filed next to screenshots, covered on this page.

If Adinand Auto File Sorter is installed

Then a video you downloaded may have been moved on purpose. The app picks up .mp4, .mkv, .avi and .webm files from Downloads and puts them in Downloads › Sorted Files › Videos; a video with any other extension, such as .mov, goes to Others in the same tree. It only looks at the folders it has been given — Downloads unless you add more — and the camera folder is not one of its preset choices, so recordings and in-app downloads are not what it moves. Its History lists each file it moved, and the latest sort can be undone in the free version.