We’ve been asked to write a post about how you can use DownAlbum to download complete photo albums from Facebook. We’ve gone one step better and have created a Youtube video that explains the whole thing.
Here’s the video. You can play it here or on Youtube itself:
Here are some tips to remember:
If the album is very large, wait until all of the photos are shown on the first DownAlbum page before trying to save the album. If the page hasn’t finished loading, you won’t get all the photos.
Even though the photos on the DownAlbum page are shown smaller than the original, the full-size photo will be saved to your computer.
You will need a lot of RAM on your computer before you will be able to load large photo albums. If you’re squeaking by with 2 gigs or 4 gigs of RAM, you probably won’t be able to load albums with 100 or more photos.
If you don’t have a lot of RAM, try closing everything down first. Make sure you only have the single Facebook page open before you load the album. Basically you want to single-task, not multitask.
Please Note: Since we wrote this review, ‘Download FB Album mod’ has changed its settings and asks form more permissions than we feel is safe. Here are the permissions it is asking for now:
Too many permission for a Facebook downloading app.
There is no reason why this extension has to access ALL of your data on websites, that would include passwords, by the way. Nor is there any reason for it to access your other tabs or browsing activity. It seems that the creators are involved in data mining, selling your information to advertisers, etc. Beware! We’re going back to Fotobounce.
We’ve talked about this mod before (read that post here: Download Facebook Albums) but since then, the creator of the software has given us a bit more information about it. The basic or Normal option works fine but sometimes you might want to adjust some of the settings. Here’s how you can do that.
1. This mod only works in Google Chrome. As we’ve said many times, you should be using Chrome anyway. Whatever you do, don’t use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Use Chrome or Firefox. We recommend Chrome.
2. Head over to the Chrome app store. Chrome Store
3. Add the ‘Download FB Album mod’ to Chrome.
4. Open your Facebook account and find an album that you want to download. Up on the top right of your url bar, you will see a new icon. Click it. This will begin the process, after you’ve chosen the settings that you want. Here is the icon:
This icon is only visible when you are viewing your Facebook pages.
5. We discussed the normal settings last time. Basically, you go to the album, click on the icon, choose Normal and a new tab opens. Press CTRL and S at the same time and the page is downloaded complete with all of the photos in a separate folder. This process could take some time, depending on how many photos are in the album and how fast your Internet connection is.
6. Here are the choices available from the drop-down menu:
Normal works fine for us but there are other choices as well.
7. If the album you want to download is large, and there are many large albums on Facebook, you might want to select ‘Without auto load’. If you choose this option, only the photos that are loaded will be saved. Some albums have thousands of photos in them. If you don’t choose the ‘Without auto load’ option, the download would take a very long time, if it finished at all.
8. Some albums have nice descriptions beside each photo. If you click ‘Load Captions’, those words will be saved with the photo.
9. If the download gets interrupted, you can choose ‘Load from specific id’. This is good for large albums, just in case the download stops after a few hundred photos. Your download will start from where it left off before the interruption. There is also the choice ‘Large Album Optimize’ which is good for massive photo albums.
Those are some of the choices available to you. We’ve tried to explain some of them here but you can always check out the official details on the download page.
Thanks for reading! Here are the official comments on the mod, as of May 13, 2013:
Download Steps:
1. Click the Page Actions button in any album/profile
2. Select your option:
●1 -> Normal Download: try to autoload all photos
●2 -> Download without auto load: only output loaded photos( For large album )
●3 -> Load from specific id:
useful when autoload stopped due to error and want to load after the last photo grabbed.
( For very large album to optimize loading speed )
( e.g. 500th -> end not 1st -> end )
www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=123456 <- Enter this number
● -- Load Comments & Friend tag ( Take longer time )
● -- Large Album Optimize ( Save the page as usual )
● -- Compress data ( save more data for option 4 )
Fast: lzw, Extreme: lzma+lzw. Try none/fast if crash occur.
●4 -> Export last album ( may not work for large album )
3. Save the new page opened. ( Press "Ctrl+S" & save with "Web Page, Complete" type )
**ChangeName is used to rename file name to (ascending) order
Steps to change name:
1. Click 'ChangeName'->'Ok' to reverse photo's order
2. 'Auto Zip all' -> Wait & Done! (html is packed inside zip)
OR
3. Save the page with images -> Drag photos you needed
4. Click 'Change Name'
5. 'Zip all files' -> Unzip & Done!
(6. If you want to view generated page offline,save the HTML in zip again to embed the script )
p.s. Please 'Reset' before download another album
Please Note: Since we wrote this review, ‘Download FB Album mod’ has changed its settings and asks form more permissions than we feel is safe. Here are the permissions it is asking for now:
Too many permission for a Facebook downloading app.
There is no reason why this extension has to access ALL of your data on websites, that would include passwords, by the way. Nor is there any reason for it to access your other tabs or browsing activity. It seems that the creators are involved in data mining, selling your information to advertisers, etc. Beware! We’re going back to Fotobounce.
If you want to download whole photo albums on Facebook, you don’t have too many choices. The old ways, Fotobounce and others, only work sometimes, if at all now. We’ve discovered a brand new system that will download whole albums quickly and easily. Yay us! Here’s the scoop:
1. You have to be using Google Chrome as a browser. We suggest Chrome should be your default browser anyway so go to Google and download it, it you aren’t using it now.
TIP: When you are downloading software, make sure you go to the source. We’ve noticed that fake Chrome sites exist. We can only assume that these sites will install a modified version of Chrome, probably filled with some kind of malware. Go to google.com and take the link from there.
2. Once Chrome is installed, head over to the Google Web Store, everything is free so don’t worry about the word ‘store’. What you’re going to do is install an extension, a little bit of software that is added to Chrome which will download full Facebook photo albums. Here’s the link: Google Web Store
3. What you’re looking for is: Download FB Album Mod. This is an ‘extension’, not an app. Here are a couple of links to the download page for this extension:
4. Download and install the mod. You don’t have to reboot your computer or even restart Chrome.
5. Now for the fun part. Head over to Facebook and find an album that you want to save. Here is the process in pictures:
Up on the top right of your URL bar, look for this symbol. Click it.
TIP: Please note that this icon only appears when you are on a Facebook page.
6. After you click the icon, this menu appears:
Choose Normal. You can also choose to download the captions with each photo.
7. A new tab opens when you click Normal. The album will load on that page and a message will be shown at the top. It flashes on and off so be prepared to read it. Here it is:
Use the CTRL + s keys to save the album to your computer.
8. The save menu comes up next. It will give the name of the album and save it as an htm file, in other words as a complete web page. Click OK to save the file.
Saved as a Web Page, an htm file.
9. Once the file is saved, and for a large album this could take a while, head over to your download folder. The photos will be in a folder, as opposed to a single set of files, so look for the folder icon with the correct name.
Look for the folder icon with the name of the album you just saved.
10. Double click on the folder. Inside that folder will be all of the photos in the album. You’re done!
Here are the photos in this album.
As of February 5th, 2013, this system works. None of the others ways that we have written about in previous posts seem to work now. Why? Probably because of new privacy settings that Facebook is using. Fotobounce will still work with some albums but it’s much more difficult to use and it still stops working on large albums. This system, using Download FB Album Mod, works perfectly. Let us know if you have a problem with it.
