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Now this would be incredibly handy for me. Today I accidentally deleted all my photo albums with all my photos on my computer. I don't have any backups of them, but I do have them on Facebook.

Ideally I want a program that can....

  • Download all my albums in one shot (with all my photos) in an orderly fashion
  • Is free
  • Lightweight
  • Run's smoothly/not laggy or slow
  • Runs on Windows 7
  • Doesn't steal my login details (xD)

I need a program that will allow me to grab/download all my Facebook albums in one shot onto my computer.

I did try using recovery programs to try and recover my deleted files, unfortunately they needed administrative permissions to run. I am at a last resort now. I also did try downloading my data from Facebook, but it didn't quite work out as it downloaded heaps of other random folders and random stuff and duplicated a whole lot of my photos. (Not very good)

Any suggestions?

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  • I would advise against using fbdownloader.com as it seems to comes with some adware. Jun 9, 2014 at 15:00
  • Anything similar for D/Ling a friend's album(s) to which I have legitimate access, obviously? Jun 10, 2014 at 2:07
  • @Mawg: That would make a good separate question, please create it :-)
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Jun 10, 2014 at 2:23
  • I googled. Took 2 minutes to find something. Several somethings, actually. I went with a Chrome extension dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41213396/AlbumFetcher.html No real need for a question when Google provides some answers Jun 10, 2014 at 6:53
  • @Mawg- Thanks for that, unfortunately it doesn't quite work and Google Chrome gives the error "Apps, extensions and user scripts cannot be added from this website". So I probably need a program to do it. Jun 10, 2014 at 6:56

2 Answers 2

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Fortunately, Facebook itself has an easy way to do this:

  1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/settings
  2. Click on Download a copy of your Facebook data
  3. Click on the green button Start My Archive
  4. Enter your password
  5. Confirm again
  6. You will receive two emails, the second one containing a link like https://www.facebook.com/dyi?x=iefuwiefuw
  7. Open this link
  8. Enter your password again
  9. Click Download archive
  10. Your albums are in the "photos" folder. Use the HTML summary file to see albums names.

What's included?
Posts, photos and videos you've shared
Your messages and chat conversations
Info from the About section of your profile
And more

Obviously, that's only your own albums, not albums of other people.

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  • 1
    beat me to it :P I would note that any file names are turned into yuck on the Facebook Server (ie 253065168037661.jpg even if you uploaded MyDogTerrorBeingReallyCute.jpg), which is annoying. It also loses pretty much all of the metadata - ie camera, gps, etc. that may be on the image originally. (I believe that removal is before storage in Facebook's servers so a different tool would not be able to avoid taht) Jun 9, 2014 at 14:32
  • 2
    Note that regarding messages it doesn't include the pictures that were included in the messages. (at least last time I tried a few months ago). The official Facebook description is deceptive. Jun 9, 2014 at 15:01
  • Any change to specify to download images from a group that I'm the admin of? Jun 10, 2014 at 16:53
  • @Joraid: Please ask as a separate new question thanks!
    – Nicolas Raoul
    Jun 11, 2014 at 3:21
2

I did try the 'Download a copy of your Facebook data' option on Facebook sometime ago. Here was the problem with it and I probably should have wrote this up ages ago anyways but forgot to and well only just decided to write it up now since I found my own solution anyways.

  1. Duplicates photos, tick, and lots of them too including my profile picture several times
  2. Album names are not the same as they were on my Facebook, instead they were randomly named in digits.
  3. Albums that contained videos (Which mine did) were downloaded in very low, poor quality and pictures came out half that quality but still reasonably though.
  4. It included a whole bunch of .html files within my albums + unwanted personal information. All I wanted was to download my files such as photos (nothing too fancy) like past relationships etc.

And that was why I didn't accept Nicolas Raohl's answer some time ago when he first answered, however today I did find an extension that suits to my likings. It doesn't look too good on looks but it worked for me.

App for Google Chrome: Facebook Album & Photo Manager

It's an App for Google Chrome by the way. When I download albums, it is perfect (well for me) (fair warning but this app didn't work for everyone), I also don't have to rename my downloaded albums to what they were named on Facebook. Just need to sign in to Facebook. I can also manage my photos which was pretty cool too, create new albums from it (not needed, but nice) and it had a pretty decent web interface although the album thumbnails were a bit stretched but it was really good.

Thanks though. :)

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