How to Download an Entire Twitch Channel: Back Up Every VOD

Updated: 2026-06-29 · Written by the vodfetch founder

A practical, honest guide to archiving every VOD from a Twitch channel: how to find the Videos tab, grab each past broadcast's URL, and save the whole channel to MP4 with the free Twitch Downloader.

Can you download an entire Twitch channel at once?

There is no official Twitch button to export a whole channel, and no single click that grabs every video at once. Twitch serves each video individually, so backing up a channel really means downloading each VOD one at a time and collecting them in a folder.

The good news: every public past broadcast, highlight, and clip has its own URL, and the free Twitch Downloader saves each one to a clean MP4. Work through the list video by video and you end up with a complete local backup of the channel.

This guide is for legitimate archiving: saving your own content, backing up public VODs, or fair-use purposes. Always respect the Twitch Terms of Service and copyright, and only download content you have the right to keep.

vodfetch also has a channel browser built in: paste just the channel's name and, if they're not live, you'll see a scrollable list of their recent VODs and clips to pick from — instead of hunting through the Videos tab and copying each URL by hand.

Find every VOD on the channel's Videos tab

Open the channel page at twitch.tv/<channelname> and click the Videos tab. This is where Twitch lists the streamer's saved content, grouped into Past Broadcasts, Highlights, and sometimes Uploads and Collections.

Use the filter dropdown to switch between these categories and the sort option to order by most recent or most viewed. Past Broadcasts are the raw stream recordings; Highlights are curated clips the streamer chose to keep permanently.

Important: regular Past Broadcasts are temporary. Twitch typically deletes them after 7 to 60 days depending on the account, so if you want a real backup, archive them sooner rather than later. Highlights and uploads stay until the streamer removes them.

Each past broadcast has its own VOD URL

Click any video in the Videos tab and look at the address bar. Every VOD opens at a URL like twitch.tv/videos/123456789, where the number is the unique video ID. That URL is the single piece of information the Twitch Downloader needs.

To build your archive list, open each VOD (or right-click and copy the link) and collect the URLs. For a channel with many broadcasts, paste them into a simple text file so you can work through them in order without losing your place.

Highlights and clips have their own links too. Clips live at clips.twitch.tv/<slug>, and the Twitch Downloader handles VODs, highlights, and clips the same way: paste the link, pick a quality, save the file.

A practical per-VOD workflow to back up the whole channel

Because it is one VOD at a time, the trick is a repeatable rhythm. Paste a VOD URL into the Twitch Downloader, choose your quality (Source/best for an exact archive, or a lower resolution to save space), and download. While that VOD muxes to MP4, queue up the next URL.

The Twitch Downloader saves each video as a standard MP4 (with a clean .ts fallback if ffmpeg is not installed), downloads segments in parallel for speed, and resumes any download that gets interrupted, so a dropped connection on a 6-hour stream will not force you to start over.

Name files consistently, for example by date and title, and keep them in one channel folder. After you have worked through the Videos tab, that folder is your complete channel backup.

Plan for storage before you start

Full-channel backups get large fast. A single hour of Source-quality 1080p60 stream can run several gigabytes, so a channel with dozens of long past broadcasts can easily reach hundreds of gigabytes or more.

Estimate before you commit: multiply the number of hours you want to keep by a rough per-hour size for your chosen quality. If space is tight, download at 720p instead of Source, or use the audio-only option for talk-heavy streams you only want to listen to.

Back up to a dedicated external drive rather than your system disk, and verify a few files play correctly before deleting anything from Twitch.

How to download a Twitch video

1. 1

   Open the channel's Videos tab

   Go to twitch.tv/<channelname>, click the Videos tab, and use the filter to view Past Broadcasts, Highlights, or Uploads.

2. 2

   Collect each VOD URL

   Open or copy the link for every video you want; each one looks like twitch.tv/videos/123456789, and paste them into a text file as your archive list.

3. 3

   Paste the first URL into Twitch Downloader

   Drop a VOD URL into the Twitch Downloader and click Analyze to see the available qualities for that video.

4. 4

   Choose a quality and download

   Pick Source/best for an exact backup or a lower resolution to save space, then download the VOD as MP4 while you queue the next URL.

5. 5

   Repeat for every video on the channel

   Work through your URL list one VOD at a time, saving each file into a single channel folder with a consistent name.

6. 6

   Verify and store the backup

   Play a few finished MP4s to confirm they are intact, then keep the full folder on a dedicated external drive.

Frequently asked questions

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