How to Download Password-Protected Vimeo Videos That Are Not Embedded

Learn how to handle password-protected Vimeo videos from direct Vimeo pages without relying on embedded players.

Author

4/16/2026

2 min read

vimeo

download

password protected

privacy

tutorial

Example: https://vimeo.com/1100807276

Some password-protected Vimeo videos live on Vimeo's own domain rather than inside an embedded player on a third-party site. The download process for these requires a slightly different approach — you need to pass both your browser cookies and the video password to yt-dlp.

Steps

Navigate to the video page and unlock it with the password
Look up your Chrome profile number
Build and run the download command

1. Navigate to the video page and unlock it with the password

Open the Vimeo URL in your browser and type in the password when prompted. This authenticates your session so the cookies will contain the access grant.

2. Look up your Chrome profile number

Type chrome://profile-internals/ into your Chrome address bar
Find your active profile and note its number

3. Build and run the download command

You'll need three pieces of information:

The video URL in the format https://vimeo.com/{VIDEO_ID}
Your Chrome profile number from the previous step
The video password

Here's the command template:

yt-dlp \
  'https://vimeo.com/{VIDEO_ID}' \
  --cookies-from-browser "chrome:Profile {NUMBER}" \
  --video-password '{PASSWORD}' \
  -N 20 \
  -S 'codec:avc,res,ext' \
  --merge-output-format mp4 \
  --remux-video mp4 \
  --postprocessor-args "ffmpeg:-movflags +faststart"

And just like that, the download kicks off!

The video file is now saved to your machine.

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