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Getting Cookies

Some features — like backing up dashboard-only blogs, downloading videos, and saving notes — require you to be logged in to Tumblr. tumblr-backup uses a cookie file to access your Tumblr session.

There are two ways to get a cookie file:

tb-login is a command that comes with tumblr-backup. It logs in to Tumblr and saves your cookies to a file.

Run it with the name of the file you want to save cookies to:

tb-login cookies.txt

It will ask for your Tumblr email and password. Once you've logged in, use the cookie file with --cookiefile:

tumblr-backup --cookiefile cookies.txt blog-name

If your cookies expire (you'll see login-related errors), just run tb-login cookies.txt again to refresh them.

Option 2: Export cookies from your browser

If you'd rather not enter your password in the terminal, you can export cookies from a browser where you're already logged in to Tumblr.

  1. Install a cookies.txt browser extension:
  2. Go to tumblr.com and make sure you're logged in.
  3. Click the extension icon and export/save the cookies to a file (e.g. cookies.txt).
  4. Use the file with --cookiefile:
tumblr-backup --cookiefile cookies.txt blog-name

Note

Browser cookies expire over time. If your backup starts failing with login errors, export a fresh cookie file from your browser.