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Mastodon Updated 4 min read Clearlla Team

Saving Media From Mastodon, Whatever Instance It Lives On

Mastodon is thousands of separate servers, which sounds like a problem for a downloader. It isn't.

Use it now: Mastodon downloader Bluesky downloader

How it works

Every Mastodon server runs the same software and exposes the same public API. When you paste a post link, Clearlla asks that specific server for the post and reads the attachments it lists. There is no scraping, no key, and no central service in the middle, which is why a post on a tiny self-hosted instance works exactly like one on mastodon.social.

Attachments come back at the resolution they were uploaded. Video is stored as a single MP4 rather than a stream, so it downloads in one piece with no stitching involved.

The steps

  • Open the post on the instance that hosts it. If you found it via a boost, click through to the original.
  • Copy the link from the address bar.
  • Paste it into the Clearlla Mastodon downloader.
  • Download each attachment. Multi-image posts list every image separately.

What won't work

  • Followers-only and direct posts. The server refuses them to anyone who isn't logged in, and so it refuses them to us.
  • Instances running authorized-fetch, which require a signed request even for reads.
  • Text-only posts, since there is nothing attached to save.

Frequently asked questions

CT

Written by

Clearlla Team

Editorial & Engineering

The Clearlla editorial team builds and tests the downloader every day. We write from hands-on experience shipping Clearlla and saving public media across the platforms we support: TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Streamable, Twitch, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Telegram, on both mobile and desktop.

More about the Clearlla team →

Where to go next

Picked from the same registry that powers the downloaders, so every link here points at something that works today.

Content version 1. Next editorial review due . Primary reader goal: Download.

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