How to download/save HTML5 Video on IOS to device

Question

I'm building a web application that creates a slideshow mp4 video. It will be uploaded to S3 and viewed through HTML5 . The goal is to share it on instagram but instagram doesn't allow direct sharing through web. Hence, the alternative is to get the user to download it to their mobile device and upload it manually through the app.

On Android, I'm able to download the video using it's video controls or through <a href='s3-video-link.mp4' download>

However this doesn't work on IOS. How can I download a html5 video onto the mobile device? Can I download directly from s3 somehow? Or is there any possible option to get it to upload to instagram?

Answer 1

The sandboxed nature of iOS means that while Safari can access and download a file unless there is an app registered to handle that filetype that immediately accepts it then it is lost to the user.

If the user has the Instagram app installed, then you could use their custom URL scheme to reference the asset, but the documentation seems more targeted to images than video so YMMV.

There have been some attempts to reverse engineer the APIs that their app uses, and create ways around their current limitations, but nothing that would address your requirement (the various sharing widgets that target Pinterest, Facebook etc don't seem to support Instagram so it's a common problem). Might be worth reaching out to their developer support folks?