At least some of what you can currently view online will disappear in the future.
There may not be anything you can do to stop the content from disappearing at its original location, but we can all play a role in keeping it online in an archived format.
This is essential for researchers, journalists and activists to properly do our work, and is typically valuable for the average member of the public as well.
The responsibility for keeping things online falls on us all, so the more of us who get in the habit of archiving things we see, the better.
Here’s how to properly archive what you see online.
When To Archive
If you come across something you feel needs to be kept online, you should archive it immediately. Don’t procrastinate. I’ve had cases where I did, and ended up failing to get it captured before it was taken down.
In addition, let’s say you stumble upon something concerning you want to bring attention to publicly, such as by posting about it online. Make sure you archive the content before you do so, that way you can ensure there’s proof it was posted in case it gets deleted. This is essential.
In February 2025, I released Find IDF Soldiers, a database which now has the names and profiles of more than 200 Canadians who have joined the Israeli military. This database contains at least hundreds of sources, and I archived every one before publishing it.
That ended up coming in handy, as many of the sources describing what the soldiers did during their time in the military were eventually deleted (including at a major Canadian news outlet). Because I archived them before that happened, I was able to publish articles indicating exactly what was deleted or modified, and providing a link to an archived copy.
With that out of the way, here are some archiving methods.
Screenshots and Screen Recordings
The most-common way I see people archiving stuff online is with screenshots taken on their computer or mobile device. This is OK if you can’t do anything else, and is easy, but it’s the worst option.
Screenshots aren’t very reliable given how easily they can be modified or even generated in full. For example, see this screenshot I generated of a non-existent tweet stating something I’d never say.
They’re also not something others can easily find. Sure, you can share them privately, or even post them to your social media accounts, but this will only be useful in the immediate future. It will lose utility with time as it becomes more difficult for those who need it to find it (potentially including yourself, unless you rename the screenshot immediately after taking it to make it easier to search on your device later on).
If you absolutely can’t do any archiving beyond something local to your device, a better option is a screen recording. This has the same problem with screenshots in terms of being difficult for others to find, but it does avoid some of the reliability issues with screenshots.
For example, let’s say you want to archive a tweet. You can take a screen recording of yourself opening Twitter on your phone, heading to the tweet in question and then clicking on the tweet, and perhaps even going onward to the profile of the person who published it to show it there. This does a better job than a screenshot of proving the post is legitimate and wasn’t tampered with.
Screen recording also means you can easily save a copy of a short video (I’ll get into much better ways to do this later on in the article, though).
Your phone should be able to take screen recordings without installing any extra apps. You can find instructions for Apple and Android phones online.
It’s worth taking screenshots and video captures of anything you want to archive so you have a copy that can’t be deleted by anyone else, but don’t stop here.
Public Archiving Services
The next step should be using at least one public archiving service, but ideally multiple. I’ll go through some options here.
The Wayback Machine
This is probably the most well-known public archiving service, and it’s free for everyone to use.
To start, head to their website. If you want to save something, copy the relevant URL, paste it into the box under “Save Page Now” and then click “Save Page.”
You should then be presented with a checklist of options. I’d suggest clicking: “Save outlinks,” “Save screenshot” and “Save also in my web archive.” The last option only works if you have an account, but you can make one for free and doing so will allow you to have an easier time finding what you’ve saved in the future.
After you’ve done this, click “Save Page.” The tool will start working immediately, and if successful, it will give you links to the saved versions of the page you can share with anyone.
Click here to see what a page on The Maple website looks like when archived using this service.
Spend some time on the site and you’ll discover it has a bunch of other features, like extensions for your browser to make saving and viewing pages even easier.
This is much better than a screenshot because it’s a way for anyone viewing the link to know it’s a copy of the content in question that hasn’t been tampered with, and is a pretty close replication of the page as it appeared at the time of capture.
Moreover, it’s much easier for anyone looking for an archived version of the content in question to find it, and that’s because of the site’s second major function.
Go back to the site’s main page, and you’ll see that you can paste a URL into the search bar at the top. Click enter, and the site will then bring you to a page showing you how many times the URL has been archived as well as the date of each one. It also lets you check out what was saved each time it was archived. This means you can get a rough idea of how old the page may be and see how it may have changed with time.
In addition, this means anyone looking for archived versions of the page can find them easily. Let’s say I’m reading an old article and click on a hyperlink that sends me to a page that no longer exists. I can simply copy that URL, head to the Wayback Machine, paste it into the search bar and then hopefully be presented with multiple archived versions of it. This is much better than asking around for a screenshot or a version of the page saved to someone’s device as a PDF.
This isn’t just a theoretical, by the way. My investigation into HonestReporting Canada, a pro-Israel media lobby group, relied on a bunch of old documents and web pages, and I could only find them because someone had made the effort to archive them back then.
Archive Today
This website is similar to the Wayback Machine. You should archive any URL you want to save here as well (and also search up ones you want to find).
The site works in a similar way to the Wayback Machine. Head to the site, and you’ll see a red bar to archive a URL and a blue one to view any archived versions of a URL that have already been made.
Click here to see what a page on The Maple website looks like when archived using this service.
You should use this site in addition to the Wayback Machine for a few reasons.
First, having archived copies in multiple places is always better than it being limited to one, as even public archived copies can go down.
Second, for certain things (social media posts, PDFs, etc.) one of these sites may work better than the other at capturing a clean copy. For example, the Wayback Machine can archive PDFs in a way where they will continue to be viewed as normal, whereas Archive Today does not. Meanwhile, Archive Today does a better job at capturing Instagram posts.
Third, certain websites (such as some Canadian publications) can’t be captured at the Wayback Machine due to these companies asking to be exempted from it, which any site can do. But Archive Today almost always will be able to capture these pages.
PermaCC
This service, built by Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab, is similar to the other two, but I feel it often produces cleaner copies of content.
Click here to see what a page on The Maple website looks like when archived using this service.
Anyone can view archived versions made with PermaCC. However, most people will have to pay to actually make those archives. Certain academic institutions give access to it to their members for free, so check if that’s the case for yours if you belong to one.
Otherwise, you can purchase a membership for a certain number of archives per month, or a one-time purchase of a set amount of links. This won’t be something most can do, but I thought I’d include it anyways.
Audio and Video
The services above work well for text and image-based content, but usually have issues with archiving pages with audio and/or video on them in a way that will allow those viewing the capture to play it. As such, we have to turn to some other options that rely on downloading a copy of the audio or video to your device.
There are hundreds of sites online that offer this service, and you’ve maybe used at least one of them in the past to save the audio from a YouTube video to your device, for example.
The problem is that these sites are often slow, sketchy and/or infested with ads. Here are a couple options that aren’t (but please do get in touch if you have better ones).
Cobalt
This site works for free, has no ads, is easy to use and clean compared to the average one you’ll see pop up on a Google search.
To save a copy of a video or podcast, head to this site, paste the URL of the content into the bar, select either “auto” (to download the file in its original format) or “audio” (if you want audio extracted from a video, for example), and then hit the “>>” button to get the tool started.
If it works, you should be presented with a direct link to the video or audio that you can share, and also a download button to save it to your device. I’d suggest downloading it and also copying a link for future use.
One important thing to note is that this service doesn’t work for all sites, including YouTube. The site does have a list of supported services letting you know where it will work.
yt-dlp
This is the absolute best way to download video and audio from almost any site.
It lets you download the content directly to your device in any audio or video format you want and with any modifications you’d like (so, for example, you can download a video hosted on a site in any format as an mp4, and set it to only download a certain portion of the video). You can also set it to just download the audio of any video.
This service is free, and works directly from your computer so you don’t even need to visit a site. And as I mentioned, I’ve yet to find a single website where it doesn’t work, including YouTube and Canadian news outlets.
If you can figure out how to use yt-dlp, you’ll probably never use another service again.
However, there are a couple issues. First, it only works for desktops and laptops that have Windows or Linux installed, which means Mac users are out of luck. Second, it has a learning curve for the average person (including me), as installing it requires navigating GitHub, and it functions through your device’s command line, not the typical sort of installed program you’re probably used to.
I’m not going to give you instructions on how to install or use it here, as doing so would be too complicated and I’m not an expert. I also can’t answer how-to questions on it. But you can find these sorts of resources online and give them a go. Here’s one.
Now, making the copies of audio/video you save through these sites available to others comes with some of the challenges of the screenshot/screen recording methods, as ensuring they’re publicly accessible means having to upload them yourself or pass them on to a platform willing to do it for you.
This may be feasible and safe, but also could violate copyright laws, so it’s important to know what you’re doing.
However, at the very least, these methods will ensure the content lives somewhere, and can be provided as needed indefinitely.
I hope this article encourages you to start archiving, and gives you the tools you need to do so. The more of us the better.
I’m by no means an expert though, and some of you probably have tools you’d like to recommend to me and other Maple readers. If so, please email us at hello@readthemaple.com with “Archive Feedback” in the subject line.
I’ll update this article in the future with any additional tools or suggestions I think may be of use.
Happy archiving!
