Twitch has grown to more than 140 million unique monthly visits in a few years. (source)

The online streaming platform has gained immense popularity amongst influencers publishing a wide variety of useful and on demand content, especially by real life streamers, gamers, and music producers. 

The only shortcoming is that Twitch does not have its own archive system. 

There have been reports indicating that the platform deletes videos time after time to avoid data clogging. (source)

As an influencer it is highly recommended that you keep all your data safe whether on the platform or elsewhere. 

Below are various ways to save your published streams. Check them out.

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How to save your Twitch streams and podcasts permanently on the app?

Method 1 – Turn your Streams into VODs

A simple way to save your Twitch videos is by converting them into VODs (Videos on Demand), which is an inbuilt option in the app.

Step 1: Login into your Twitch creators account

Step 2: Click the profile icon drop down on the top right side of the screen

Step 3: Go to Creator Dashboard

Step 4: Select Settings > Streams > VOD settings

Step 5: Click on “Always Publish VODs”

This will save all your streams as VODs. 

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Note – You have to follow all these steps only once but before recording streams. 

Check out their official page for more details.

Also, to enable the VOD option, you will need to have Twitch’s or Amazon’s membership plan which will save your streams for 60 days. 

Otherwise, the VODs will be saved on the app for only 14 days. 

Method 2 – Convert your VODs into Highlights

VODs expire in just 2 weeks if you don’t have a paid subscription plan for Twitch or other supporting platforms

An alternative to this is to convert excerpts or full videos into highlights.

Step 1: Login to your Twitch account

Step 2: Go to “Creator Dashboard” 

Step 3: Click on the “Content” drop down arrow located on the left side bar 

Step 4: A new option “Video Producer” will appear, click on it. This will display all your streams

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Step 5: Select the stream you want to save and click “Highlight”

You will be redirected to an editing page, which will allow you to select the frames from the video which you would like to highlight 

Step 6: Either select the excerpts, or select the complete timeline (recommended). 

Step 7: Click on “Publish Highlight”

This will save a copy of all your streams, videos and other content on the platform servers.

How to download your Twitch videos and streams on a device

Twitch allows streamers to download videos on devices right after the streaming ends. 

However if you missed that, you can download the “VODs” and “Highlights” files on your computer and mobile as well. 

Step 1: Log into your Twitch account 

Step 2: Go to the “Creator Dashboard”

Step 2: Click on “Content”

Step 4: Choose the “Video Producer” option located on the left sidebar 

Step 5: Select the VOD or the Highlight that you want to download 

Step 6: Click on the three dots located on the right side of your selected stream

Step 4: Click the “Download” option (third) from the drop-down menu

Note –  If the video is long or you have selected a lot of streams, then it could take you a while to complete downloading, so make sure you have a high speed internet plan.

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Other Tips for Archiving Your Twitch Streams and VODs

Twitch servers’ limited storage do not allow them to archive the massive amounts of data generated by the millions of streamers and influencers. 

So, apart from Twitch’s in-built feature to save your streams as VODs or Highlights, you can only archive your data on third party platforms.

Vods.tv and archive.org are two widely used services to archive Twitch data. 

Vods.TV

Vods.Tv allows quick archiving with an intuitive interface. 

The service is very easy to use and it provides detailed information about your streams. 

It can be accessed by all kinds of devices, whether it be a PC, tablet or an iOS platform. 

You can even access videos and streams put up by other users. 

All you have to do is enter the Twitch streamer’s username or their game title, and you’ll be able to watch all past broadcasts, streams and also save them, even if they have been deleted from the streamer’s official Twitch page.

Another important benefit of using Vods.Tv is that it doesn’t require you to make an account. You’ll be able to watch all the videos online without login credentials. 

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Archive.org

Archive.org is the largest online library which archives all Internet sites in digital format, including Twitch. 

You are most likely to find every creator and every stream here. 

But there are two major problems you might encounter. 

First there are millions of pages from which you need to locate the one single html page you are looking for. 

(There are more than 204,778 Twitch pages on archive.org from 5 July 2002 to 23 January 2023!)

And secondly you will not be able to download anything from here. The good part is that you will be able to run the broadcast using flash. You can use an external screen recorder if you want to save the stream.

Tip – Try to find the exact date when the stream was published. This will make it very easy for you to locate and filter the Twitch html page you are looking for on archive.org. 

Other Twitch Archive Services

Apart from Vods.Tv and archive.org, Twitch Archive is another good platform for Twitch broadcasts. 

You can index more than  100TB of old archived Twitch streams. 

The only shortcoming is that the website has been static since 2014. This means that you can only go here for old podcasts and streams.

Another website named twitcharchives.com is a recently launched project by a streamer for his own favorites. The good part is that he is looking forward to expanding the services to all streamers who want to archive files using github. 

How essential is it to save your data on Twitch?

Influencers work sometimes need different platforms and multiple edits and uploads before they become viral.

As a social media influencer, saving your digital files on Twitch and also on other online platforms is a must.

Archiving your data is recommended for many reasons: 

• Your archived copy can be used to edit or add your raw files and republish them.
• In case the Twitch servers are down, you can access archived files.
• Clouds and other archive platforms allow you to save your data in multiple formats which is not possible with Twitch. 

Saving files is also important for Twitch viewers interested in or following channels of their preferences.

Just two years back in early 2021, Twitch had 7.03 million streamers.  By December 2022 more than 2.5 million new influencers joined the program, raising the count to 9.89 million. (source)

The above step by step guides will help you in saving videos on Twitch. Check out our other archiving guides on TikTok and other media handles here.