Facebook testing offline videos in India starting July 11: Report

According to emerging reports, Facebook will soon be trialling offline videos on it’s platform in India.

Much like how YouTube’s offline video works, the feature will let users download and save a video on their timeline to watch later. According to Gadgets360, Facebook sent out an email to media partners in india stating it would be testing the tool with a small number of users starting July 11.

The email goes on to say that India was chosen as a test ground, considering the unreliability of data connectivity in the country.

Publishers will also be allowed to opt out of the trial, meaning their posted videos will not be available for download. You can do that by navigating to the Settings tab on your page, and selecting the “Prohibit downloading to Facebook” option under Content Distribution.

Videos downloaded in such a manner will remain in the Facebook app, and will be unavailable to share with other apps or devices. In addition, the saved videos can only be played offline for up to 48 hours, after that the device has to reconnect online so the app can check to make sure the video is still available.

It’s not yet clear what other restriction facebook might put into place, but we can likely expect the new feature to be officially rolled out in India within a couple of months.