cobalt helps you save anything from your favorite websites: video, audio, photos or gifs. just paste the link and you're ready to rock! no ads, trackers, paywalls, or other nonsense. just a convenient web app that works anywhere, whenever you need it.

cobalt was created for public benefit, to protect people from ads and malware pushed by its alternatives. we believe that the best software is safe, open, and accessible. it's possible to keep the main instances up thanks to our long-standing infrastructure partner, [royalehosting.net]({partners.royalehosting})!

all requests to the backend are anonymous and all information about tunnels is encrypted. we have a strict zero log policy and don't track *anything* about individual people. when a request needs additional processing, cobalt processes files on-the-fly. it's done by tunneling processed parts directly to the client, without ever saving anything to disk. for example, this method is used when the source service provides video and audio channels as separate files. additionally, you can [enable forced tunneling](/settings/privacy#tunnel) to protect your privacy. when enabled, cobalt will tunnel all downloaded files. no one will know where you download something from, even your network provider. all they'll see is that you're using a cobalt instance.

cobalt is used by countless artists, educators, and content creators to do what they love. we're always on the line with our community and work together to make cobalt even more useful. feel free to [join the conversation](/about/community)! we believe that the future of the internet is open, which is why cobalt is [source first](https://sourcefirst.com/) and [easily self-hostable]({docs.instanceHosting}). if your friend hosts a processing instance, just ask them for a domain and [add it in instance settings](/settings/instances#community). you can check the source code and contribute [on github]({contacts.github}) at any time. we welcome all contributions and suggestions!

newest features, such as [remuxing](/remux), work locally on your device. on-device processing is efficient and never sends anything over the internet. it perfectly aligns with our future goal of moving as much processing as possible to the client.