Ultimate X/Twitter media downloader tutorial

Tired of looking for ways to bulk download media from X (formerly Twitter) and not finding any that works? Well, that ends today now that you're here. The X platform is a popular (or unpopular) social media platform and as such, people like you are looking to download stuffs from the website. In this tutorial, I will be recommending to you an X downloader that still works. It's called WFDownloader App. It can download images and videos from almost any type of X page you give to it. This X downloader is completely free (without trials) and cross-platform so it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Here are 12 reasons to try this X downloader called WFDownloader App.

• It can download media (images and videos) from virtually any X page you throw at it. It supports downloading from X/Twitter profiles, status/tweet pages, your likes page, your bookmarks page, Community pages, List pages, search pages, and even hashtag pages.
• Apart from being able to download media, it can also be used to back up tweets from such pages. It allows you to back up the tweets of any X profile not just yours (which Twitter allows).
• Also, it can extract your list of followers and even the accounts you follow.
• It provides a "Config" button that allows you to customize what to download. For example, you can set it to grab only images (while excluding videos), ignore retweet posts, etc.
• It works on large X accounts (to the extent that Twitter allows it, you can't force the site).
• It allows updating what you've already downloaded with only new items since the last time it was run.
• It allows grouping or categorization of your X jobs for easy management.
• If you have multiple X accounts or jobs to be done, it allows you to queue them all so you don't have to do them one by one.
• It is completely free, with no ads and anything bundled with the software.
• It is cross-platform and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
• It not only works for X/Twitter but also works on Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, etc. So you only need to use one tool.
• Lastly, it's easy to use. No complicated setup is involved in getting the software to run, and the steps can be easily followed.

The procedure to download from X is straightforward using WFDownloader App. A quick demonstration of how you generally use the software to download from websites. Notice, you can just drag and drop the link and then search.

To continue with this tutorial, you will need to download WFDownloader App. Click the button below if you are interested. This tutorial covers downloading, updating, exporting, and queueing.

Get WFDownloader App

How to download media from X/Twitter

No matter the page you want to download media from, the procedure is the same. You copy the link, paste it into the application, perform a search, and then download. You can also just drag the link from your browser and drop it on the software. The steps shown here are longer than usual in order to cover all the important parts and show the various options available to you.

1. Copy the link of the X page whose media you want to download (e.g. profile, likes, or bookmarks page). In this example, we click the media tab of the X profile and use that link.
   *Tip: If you are downloading media from an X profile, you should use the media page and not the main X profile. For example, here, we used https://x.com/PngImgCom/media instead of https://x.com/PngImgCom.
   
2. Open WFDownloader App and click the big blue "Add" button. Alternatively, you could combine steps 1 and 2 by dragging the link from your browser and dropping it on the application.
3. The link should have been already entered for you. Now enter the folder where you want to save the images by clicking the "Browse" button.
   
4. If you want to customize how the link extractor behaves, for example, whether to ignore retweets, grab only images, etc., you can click the "Config" button on the bottom right. If the default settings are okay for you, you can ignore this step. Once you are done setting up the config you want, click "Accept".
   
   *Notes:

   • To download media (i.e., images and videos), the "Fetch_mode" must be on "Fetch media only". The other options for "Fetch_mode" are if you do not want to download the media.
   • If you are downloading large accounts, you must set the "Task_size" to "Above 1,000 tweets". And it will still be limited to what X allows.
5. After you've set the folder and the config you want, click "Confirm" to start your link search.
   
6. If you get the error "Failed. You must be logged in to do this. Import cookies from browser", you will need to either import cookies from your browser into WFDownloader App for X or use WFDownloader App's inbuilt browser to log in.
   1. Click the "Help me!" button to resolve the issue.
      
   2. Click on "Import cookies (Recommended)".
      
   3. Now import the cookies and click "Confirm". If you don't know what to do, watch how to obtain the cookie values.
      
   4. After that, retry again by clicking the "Search" button on the top-right and the link search should start this time. If not, you should get a different error.
   5. You'll only need to go through step 6 once (if you use the cookie import method). Next time you try to batch download from X/Twitter, this step will be skipped.
7. After the link search is completed, click "Confirm". A new batch will be created for you.
   
8. Click the "Start" button to begin downloading the images and videos that were extracted from the X/Twitter page. Notice the files are automatically renamed based on what you set via the "Config" button.
   
9. Allow it to complete. You can right-click any link or the batch to open the folder where the media have been downloaded to in your file explorer.
   
10. That's all!

How to download (or back up) tweets from X/Twitter

WFDownloader App allows you to back up or export tweets from any X account to a portable format known as JSON. The steps to follow are very similar to that of downloading media as shown above. The main difference is that you must use the "Config" button to specify that you want to extract for export purposes. I won't go into detail explaining the steps again since that has already been done on the one above so you can refer to that.

1. Copy the link of the X page whose tweets you want to back up. For an X profile, you need to choose the URL corresponding to the tweets you want or you may discover some tweets were ignored. For example, if you want to download only the account's status tweets, use the main profile URL. However, if you want to also include the account's reply tweets to others, first click the replies tab and use that URL instead. Since I want to back up all the account's tweets, I am using the /with_replies URL and not the profile URL.
   
2. Open WFDownloader App and click the blue "Add" button. The link should already be pasted for you. Now also set the folder you want to save the exported tweets to.
   
3. Click the "Config" button and set for "Fetch_mode" the value "Fetch tweet urls for export". You can also set other options you want. Note that if you are doing a large account, you need to specify the "Task_size" to "Above 1000".
   
4. Click "Accept" to accept your config changes. Then click "Confirm" to start the link search. Notice that the URLs of the tweets are being collected instead of media URLs which happened in the previous tutorial above. However, if you get the error message "Failed. You must be logged in to do this. Import cookies from browser", see step 6 of the previous tutorial to resolve the error.
   
5. Once the link search is completed, click "Confirm" and a new batch containing the tweet URLs will be created.
   
6. Now click the "Start" button and all the tweets will be downloaded as json files. You can open any of those json files in a text editor.
   
7. Now if you want to download all the tweets in a single json file (as opposed to a json file for each tweet like in the image above), follow these sub-steps.
   1. Right-click the new X batch (the small brown box on the left of the application and click "Export". A faster way is to click the "Export" button that is directly on top of the table of links.
      
   2. Use the browse button to set the location and filename for your export.
   3. Now choose the format of export. If you want only the links of the tweet to be exported, choose "text" but if you want other tweet info to be exported such as the tweet text, the date of tweets, the number of likes or retweets, etc, choose "json".
      
   4. After that, click "Export" to export. That's all. You can see a sample of what is contained in the json file below.
      

How to download X/Twitter followers or followings

With WFDownloader App, you can extract the list of followers or "followings" of any X account you can access. The steps here are also the same as backing up tweets. Just use the link to the followers/following page. If you want to see an elaborate tutorial on this, see how to export any X/Twitter account's followers or following.

How to update previous X/Twitter downloads

In cases where what you're downloading is not a one-time download, because the X account you are downloading from tweets regularly, you can make the software download only the new items since the last time it was run. All you need to do is click the "Update" button for this on the batch that you want to update. It's that simple.

Also, if you have categorized or grouped your X jobs, you can update all of them at once by right-clicking the category and clicking "Update each batch".

How to queue multiple X download jobs at once

If you have more than one X account or jobs you want to download, it can be tedious doing them one by one. WFDownloader App allows you to queue X jobs. You provide the list and it goes through them one by one. The feature of WFDownloader App that allows you to do this is called batch link search. Follow the link to learn more about it. A sample of the feature is shown below. Note that if you intend to update them in the future, you must select the option "Create a batch for each search link" as the linked tutorial doesn't do that.

Tips and warnings

This section is an important read, especially the warnings here. Here are some tips to follow when downloading from X.

1. Use the right URLs for what you want to do. Otherwise, you might have to wait an unnecessarily long time for the process to complete or worse, you might have to repeat the entire process again.
   1. If you want to download the media, go to the media page of the profile and use that link e.g. https://x.com/wfdownloader/media. This was already mentioned in the media download example.
   2. If you want to download all posts of an account, click on the "replies" tab and use that link. That is, use https://x.com/wfdownloader/with_replies instead of https://x.com/wfdownloader.
   3. From the above two points, it's suffice to say, that rarely do you want to use the main Twitter profile for anything. That is, you usually don't want to use a URL/link looking like https://x.com/wfdownloader.
2. If you want to download large accounts, you must set the "Task_size" to "Above 1,000 tweets". If you don't do that, WFDownloader App will only download below that amount before stopping. Why must you make this setting which seems unintuitive? Well it's because Twitter is now more restrictive. Note that even doing this does not guarantee that you'll get everything in the account. See the next point.
3. If you tried to download and didn't get everything, it's either one of the following.
   1. You used the wrong Twitter URL/link. See the first point.
   2. The account may be private or has many of its posts hidden, censored, deleted, shadowbanned, etc. If X/Twitter isn't providing it, WFDownloader App isn't getting it, unfortunately.
4. If the Twitter scraping you did with WFDownloader App didn't get everything the first time, for example, you got only 15k tweets instead of an expected total of 20k tweets. There's a trick to continue from where you stopped rather than start the whole process again. First, download everything you were able to scrape. Then modify the update URL in the software to continue from the oldest tweet.
1. Check the date of the earliest post or media that was downloaded. If you added the date in the name (by changing the naming scheme via the Twitter config), then you can just pick it from there. Otherwise, you'll have to open the json file in your browser and get the date or open the tweet corresponding to the media in your browser to see the date.
2. Now in WFDownloader App, click the down-arrow beside the update button and click "Set URL to update from".
3. Now modify the URL there to now include the date to start from. So instead of https://x.com/wfdownloader/with_replies, it should now be https://x.com/Moneytaur_/with_replies#<2015-12-25 (using an example early date, note "<" before the date which means all posts before that date). Click "Confirm".
4. Click the "Update" button. You can keep repeating this as needed. If there are no items added. Then that's all you can get for the account.
5. If you want to update the account (from time to time) to get recent posts added, you need to return the edited URL to what it was originally.
5. If you find yourself having to modify the Twitter config for each link search, simply select "Remember choices for next time" and your Twitter settings will be saved and reused until you change it again.

Now for the warnings. Due to how restrictive X (Twitter) has become since this tutorial was written, you need to read this part. Otherwise, it may be too late when you get flagged as a bot and following the tips here won't help.

While X/Twitter is now more restrictive, you can still bulk download a lot if you are patient. If you are not patient and want to get everything as quickly as possible, then bulk downloading from Twitter isn't for you. Just stop now! You're only going to get frustrated.

If you are a casual downloader. For example, you don't download often from X/Twitter and the accounts you download are usually 300 tweets or less, you don't need to worry about anything. Now the warnings. These have been compiled from various users who contacted support.

1. Whatever you do, never get your account flagged as a bot by Twitter. Once that happens, just consider it the end of downloading with that account. There is no solution, it's over. You might think you are smart and can just create a new account and use that if that happens. But guess what, Twitter is smarter and that won't work because they know that's what you'd do. The only way out is to use another old, active, account but that may not work if your IP address has also been flagged.
2. You can get flagged if you download recklessly without any control or moderation. For example, you just keep downloading account after account, you are consistently downloading large accounts, etc. Even if the software keeps working, you need to deliberately take breaks so that you don't appear different from the normal Twitter user. No normal user, no matter how dedicated or in love with Twitter they are will be viewing 20,000 tweets daily. So don't get flagged by being careless. Remember, I already explained what happens when you get flagged.
3. That's why you should make the Twitter config "Above 1,000 tweets" permanent. It will drastically slow down your search, but also decrease your chances of getting flagged.
4. If you tried downloading a large account but it stopped halfway, or you suddenly get errors, go to X/Twitter in your browser and check if you have been forcefully logged out by Twitter. If that is the case, then it's a sign Twitter is detecting bot activity and you need to stop. If you are careless, and allow this to happen multiple times, your account will eventually get suspended.
5. For those who are already hated by X/Twitter. Depending on your ISP, IP address, whether you use a VPN or proxy, volume of traffic from your connection, previous account history, etc. you might already be under severe restrictions by X/Twitter. There is nothing WFDownloader App can do for you here. You need to completely change your whole internet identity. But if you cannot do that, the only thing is to slow down your link search even further (although it may not help). Go to Options > General Settings > Values and set a value for "Delay between web-page crawls" to at least 120 seconds. The search/crawl might move at a snail's pace, but you might be lucky Twitter accepts you this way.
6. Note that some accounts cannot be downloaded fully. For example, you could only get 2,000 even if it says there are 10,000. If you followed the tips above and it didn't work, it means the account is restricted, so stop. Trying the same account over and over will only lead to your account getting flagged as a bot.
7. Don't expect the impossible. For example, you are expecting WFDownloader App to download an account with over 100k tweets, quickly, in one go, without any issue, under the current X/Twitter restrictions. Do expect your account to get flagged as a bot. If you want to do this volume, you are better off using the official Twiter API, although I heard it's quite expensive.

For emphasis, the tool has been tested to download large accounts successfully. Someone downloaded 28k tweets with WFDownloader App, recently. Another who contacted support to make some suggestions was using WFDownloader App to manage hundreds of Twitter accounts without issue. So the software indeed works for most people out of the box (who don't need to make any additional changes). But if you are among the unlucky ones, not even WFDownloader App can help, unfortunately.

In summary, if you are a casual downloader, you don't need to worry about anything. If you download more frequently or want to do large accounts, you need to follow the given tips and remember the warnings because the website is now more restrictive than ever.

Conclusion

If you're still looking for an X downloader, WFDownloader App will fit nicely. It not only supports X but also supports Instagram, Pinterest, Mastodon, Reddit, Lemmy, Bluesky, etc.

Have you tried this tutorial? Let us hear your experience in the comments. Please share if this tutorial was helpful. Thanks for reading!

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