What 4,600 Download Requests Show About Saving Media From X
Most advice about downloading from X is guesswork: "it takes a few minutes," "files are small," "just paste the link." We wanted real numbers, so we looked at our own server logs. Between September 20 and September 25, 2026, X Media Downloader received about 4,600 download requests. This article covers what people tried to save, how long it took, how big the files were, and why about one in five requests failed.
How We Measured
Our server logs one line per job event: queued, completed, failed, or cancelled. Each line records the content type, the elapsed time, the output size, and, for failures, the error returned by the downloader. Logs do not contain account names, titles, or who made the request, and we did not look at the media itself. The window covers about five and a half days (00:02 UTC on September 20 to 12:17 UTC on September 25). Treat the figures as one week's snapshot of one service, not a measurement of X as a whole.
What People Save
Of 3,498 completed downloads, 1,814 (52%) were Spaces, 816 (23%) were broadcast replays, and 868 (25%) were videos or GIFs from regular posts. Spaces are the main reason people come here, which makes sense: X has no built-in way to save Space audio.
One detail surprised us. Of the links people pasted as ordinary post links, 1,224 turned out to be a Space (907) or a broadcast (317). People usually share a Space through a post, and that post link works fine: the downloader follows it to the Space. You don't need to hunt for the /i/spaces/ address.
How Long Downloads Take
| Content | Median time | 90% finished within | Longest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post video or GIF | 1 second | 7 seconds | 6 minutes |
| Broadcast replay | 23 seconds | about 5 minutes | 2.7 hours |
| Space (MP3) | 2.4 minutes | about 20 minutes | 11.5 hours |
Post videos are nearly instant because they are short, single files. Spaces take longer for two reasons. First, the audio is converted to MP3, and a multi-hour recording takes a while to encode. Second, some Spaces are still live. A live Space can only be recorded as fast as it happens, so a Space that runs for three more hours takes three more hours to save. Among completed Spaces, 31% finished in under a minute, 51% took between one and ten minutes, and 8% took more than half an hour. That last group is mostly live recordings, including the 11.5-hour one.
How Big the Files Are
| Content | Median size | 90% were under | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Post video or GIF | 2.9 MB | 31 MB | 1.8 GB |
| Broadcast replay | 88 MB | 684 MB | 2.6 GB |
| Space (MP3) | 103 MB | 327 MB | 2.2 GB |
Space downloads are 192 kbps MP3, which works out to about 86 MB per hour of audio. The median Space download of 103 MB is therefore about 72 minutes long, and one in ten runs past three and three-quarter hours. If you archive Spaces regularly, plan on roughly 1 GB for every 12 hours of audio. Broadcasts are video, so they grow much faster; a long broadcast can pass a gigabyte.
Why One in Five Requests Failed
About 75% of requests finished, 3% were cancelled by the person who started them, and 934 (about 20%) failed. The failures were rarely technical. Almost all of them came down to the media not being there:
| Reason | Failures | Share |
|---|---|---|
| The post has no video (text or photos only) | 494 | 53% |
| The Space ended and its host did not keep a replay | 197 | 21% |
| The video was removed or is unavailable | 89 | 10% |
| The post, Space, or broadcast no longer exists | 54 | 6% |
| The post is from a protected account | 37 | 4% |
| Temporary errors from X, interrupted transfers, unsupported links, and conversion errors | 63 | 7% |
"No video could be found" is the most common error by far. It almost always means the link points to a post with only text or photos, or to a reply or quote of a video rather than the post that actually contains it. Open the post, check that the video plays inside that exact post, and copy the link from there. Our guide to this error covers every cause.
"Replay is disabled" is the most frustrating one, because there is nothing any tool can do about it. When a host ends a Space without recording it, X never keeps the audio. According to X's help center, a recorded Space stays available until the host deletes it. A Space that was never recorded is only ever live. If you care about a Space, check whether it is being recorded, or save it while it is still live.
Fewer than 3% of failures came from transfers that broke off or from our own conversion step. Most of the rest were posts and Spaces that were gone, or never had media, by the time someone tried to save them. That matches what Pew Research Center found in 2024: nearly one in five posts in its sample was no longer visible on X within a few months of being posted.
When People Download
Requests arrived around the clock, with no hour below 128 requests over the period. The busiest hours were 09:00, 14:00, and 16:00 to 17:00 UTC, and the quietest was 21:00 UTC. That pattern fits a mix of European and American users, and live Spaces that people start saving while they are still on air.
What This Means for You
- Save soon. The biggest cause of failure is that the media is already gone. If a Space or video matters to you, save it while you are looking at it.
- Copy the link from the post that holds the video. This alone would have avoided half of all failures.
- Any link to a Space works. A post that shares a Space, or the Space link itself, both work.
- Expect real time for live Spaces. Leave the tab open. Refreshing reconnects to the same job, and the file is kept for about an hour after it is ready.
- Budget about 86 MB per hour for Space audio when planning an archive. For more on organizing and backing up recordings, see our archiving best practices.
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