For the first time with any streaming service of its kind, Amazon Instant Video lets iOS and Android users with Prime memberships download movies and TV shows to their devices for offline viewing. Here’s how to do it on your iPhone.
A feature like this has been wanted for a long time, and many users are begging Netflix to introduce the ability to watch TV shows and movies offline as they want to catch up on their favorite shows while flying around the country. However, Netflix has not yet offered such a feature.
Never fear, as Amazon takes the lead on this and Introduced content download feature for offline viewing on iOS and Android. It was previously available on Kindle Fire tablets, but now anyone with an iPhone, iPad or Android device can join the fun.
While Amazon Video isn’t as popular as Netflix, the service has a handful of great options to choose from, with a good mix of TV shows and movies to keep you entertained without the need for an internet connection.
Without further ado, here is how to download Amazon Prime movies to your iPhone so you can watch them offline.
Downloading Amazon Prime Movies
First thing you want to do Download the Amazon Video app From the App Store on your iPhone, if you haven’t already.
From there, sign in to the app using your Amazon account. Note that you need an Amazon Prime membership to download content to watch offline. Otherwise, you will not be able to take advantage of this feature.
After logging in, you will be greeted with the main screen in the application. Now, before we start downloading a movie, we will want to go into the settings to adjust the download quality of the movies and TV shows to be downloaded. To do this, tap at the bottom and then select .
You will be able to choose between , and . Choose the one you want and know that the lower quality will save storage space, while the best quality will use more storage.
After choosing a quality, return to the home screen and tap on a movie you want to download for offline viewing. I chose the 40-Year-Old Virgin.
On the right, tap on it to start the download. If you have enabled notifications for the app, you will receive a notification when the download is complete. Tapping next to the download bar allows you to pause the download or cancel it if you want.
After the download is complete, you can watch the movie without an internet connection by tapping . You will see a popup saying that the movie is only available offline for 48 hours and if you want to keep the movie for longer than 48 hours you need to reconnect to WiFi or LTE.
As you can see on my iPad, my WiFi is turned off, but I enjoy the movie as if I’m streaming it, but this time I don’t have to worry about glitches or lags.
After you finish watching the movie, you can delete it by tapping and then selecting .
Now, if it’s a TV show you want to download, unfortunately you can’t download multiple episodes at once, or even an entire season. Instead, you have to download the episodes individually.
To do this, open a TV show in the app and it will list the episodes at the bottom. Just click the Download button (a down arrow) and you’ll be fine. This episode will automatically start downloading for offline viewing.
When you delete a movie or TV show, it still holds your place even if you stop watching it, so there’s no need to keep a movie offline if you haven’t finished it yet.
