Are you using the Marco Polo app? Do you want to know how to download video from it to your device? This tutorial will give you a quick overview of what the app is and what it does, and show you how to download videos from Marco Polo to your phone.
I’ve been playing with the Marco Polo app for a while. The app, marketed as ‘video radio’, has been around for about three years, but I had a hard time finding anyone I knew who was using the app. Originally thought to replace Snapchat, its goals are now more modest.
I’m sending a ‘Marco’ and according to the game, you must respond with your ‘Polo’. A very simple premise leading to a good chat app.
Marco Polo app
The Marco Polo app allows you to send short video messages between users. It’s part Snapchat, part Tik Tok, and part something else. Yet this is different from other apps. These video messages only last a few seconds and can be about anything rather than lip syncing. You can also keep them in some kind of video call history and refer to them as you wish.
The app has been downloaded nearly 220,000 times from the Google Play Store and has over 1.1 million votes on the App Store so people are using it. Its reviewers say good things about it, but like other apps, it didn’t catch on.
Using the Marco Polo app
You install the Marco Polo app on your phone and allow it to access your contacts. Then you let it check on those people to see if they’re using the app. If available, they will appear as a square avatar on the app home page. If they don’t, they’re left blank.
You can start a video chat by recording a short video, selecting a person using Marco Polo and sending the video. They watch the video, record a reply, and then post it back. It’s like saying Marco and waiting for you to reply to Polo.
The ability to keep videos in chat history makes it more useful than other attempts at this type of video chat. You can always go back to previous chats and create a coherent chat with a specific history and history. It’s a small thing, but it makes conversations more tangible.
Download video from Marco Polo
You can download these videos to your phone to keep as well as keep them in your chat history. There is a catch though. You can only download Marco Polo videos that you made yourself. You cannot download videos sent to you. Presumably this is a security measure, but it could also be for practical reasons.
To download Marco Polo videos on Android:
- Press and hold the thumbnail of the video you want to download.
- Select Save Polo from the drop-down menu.
This will save it to your phone and play using the app or any video player. Theoretically, you could use a third-party screen recording app to record the video you take on Marco Polo, but this is not officially supported.
To download Marco Polo videos to iPhone:
- Press and hold the thumbnail of the video you want to download.
- Select Forward from the drop-down menu, then select More.
- Select Save Video.
I don’t know if the feature to save received videos is coming or if the app wants to protect privacy or modesty. On the one hand, it’s a good idea, but on the other, it’s a slight annoyance. You can still work around it. You can use the iOS screen recorder to save a copy of the received videos.
- Add the screen recorder to your Control Center.
- Start the screen recorder.
- Open the Marco Polo video and let it finish.
- After completion, stop recording and save.
The video will be in your Photo Library like any other video and will be permanently saved on your device.
Marco Polo is a good enough app that lets you video chat however you want. The downside is the requirement to allow access to all your contacts. You don’t know what the app does with this information or how it monetizes them. You have no control over this data when you allow the app, and I think that’s one of the main reasons it’s not as popular as Snapchat. Otherwise the app is easy to use and works well and deserves some more popularity.
