Reels Publishing API

This document explains how to publish a reel on a Facebook Page. To publish a reel on a Facebook Page you will:

1. Initialize an upload session to upload your reel to the Meta servers
2. Upload your reel
3. Publish the reel to your Facebook Page

• Optionally, you can invite a collaborator to publish the reel on their Facebook Page.

Sharing Disclosure

When uploading a Reel using your app, the app user should be presented with disclosure of and options for control over how their Reels are used on Facebook. Privacy / Who can see this? User selectable choice of audience.An app user should be able to select the audience for their reel. This selection corresponds to the privacy parameter in the publishing step. Posting to a Page has implicit public scope, and only the 'Public' option should be available. Limitations You can only publish Reels to Facebook Pages You can only crosspost Reels to Facebook Pages

Sharing Disclosure Mockup

Before You Start

You will need:

• A Page access token requested from a person who can perform the CREATE_CONTENT task on the Page.
• The person must grant your app the following permissions using Facebook Login:
  • pages_show_list
  • pages_read_engagement
  • pages_manage_posts
• A video file that contains your reel

Video Specifications

Step 1: Initialize an Upload Session

Before you can publish a video to a Facebook Page, you must first upload it to the Meta social graph. You will need to initialize a video upload session to start the upload process. To start a session, send a POST request to the /page-id/video_reels endpoint, where page-id is the ID for your Facebook Page, with the upload_phase parameter set to start.

Be sure the host is graph.facebook.com.

Example Request

Formatted for readability. Replace bold, italics values, such as page_access_token, with your values.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/Your_page_id/video_reels" \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{
           "upload_phase":"start",
           "access_token":"Your_page_access_token"
         }'

On success, your app will receive a video ID and a URL to the video. This video ID will be used in subsequent steps.

{
  "video_id": "video-id",
  "upload_url": "https://rupload.facebook.com/video-upload/video-id",
}   

Step 2: Upload the Video

Most Graph API calls use the graph.facebook.com host however, calls to upload videos for reels use rupload.facebook.com.

The following file sources are supported for uploaded video files:

• A file located on your computer
• A file hosted on a public facing server, such as a CDN

Upload a Local File

To initiate the upload of the video asset, send a POST request using application/octet-stream as content type to the /video-upload/video-id endpoint where video-id is the ID from Step 1, offset is set to the first byte being upload, generally 0, and file_size set to the size of your file, in bytes.

Be sure the host is rupload.facebook.com.

Video Reel Upload Quick Reference

Example Request

Formatted for readability. Replace bold, italics values, such as page_access_token, with your values.

curl -X POST "https://rupload.facebook.com/video-upload/v18.0/video-id" \
     -H "Authorization: OAuth Your_page_access_token" \
     -H "offset: 0" \
     -H "file_size: Your_file_size_in_bytes" \
     --data-binary "@my_video_file.mp4"

Upload a Hosted File

To upload a hosted file, send a POST request to the /video-upload/video-id endpoint where video-id is the ID returned in Step 1 and file_url is set to the URL for your hosted file.

Be sure the host is rupload.facebook.com.

Example Request

Formatted for readability. Replace bold, italics values, such as page_access_token, with your values.

curl -X POST "https://rupload.facebook.com/video-upload/v18.0/video_id" \
     -H "Authorization: OAuth Your_page_access_token" \
     -H "file_url: https://some.cdn.url/video.mp4"

Example Upload Response

If you upload was successful, your app will receive a JSON object with success set to true.

{"success": true}

Get the Upload Status

To get the status of a video, send a GET request to the /video-id endpoint where the video-id is the ID from initialization step and with the field set to status.

Be sure the host is graph.facebook.com.

Limitations

Sample Request

curl -X GET "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/video-id
    ?field=status
    &access_token=Your_page_access_token"

On success your app will receive a JSON object with status information that includes the processing, uploading, and publishing phases, and the video status.

Video Status Quick Reference

If reuploading doesn’t work, try again from step 1.

Example Response with a Processing Error

{
  "status": {
    "video_status": "processing",
    "uploading_phase": {
      "status": "complete",
    },
    "processing_phase": {
      "status": "not_started",
      "error": {
        "message": "Resolution too low. Video must have a minimum resolution of 540p."
      }
    }
    "publishing_phase": {
      "status": "not_started",
    }
  }
}

Example Response for an Interrupted Upload

{
  "status": {
    "video_status": "processing", 
    "uploading_phase": {
      "status": "in_progress",
      "bytes_transfered": 50002  
    }
    "processing_phase": {
      "status": "not_started"
    }
    "publishing_phase": {
      "status": "not_started",
      "publish_status": "scheduled",
      "publish_time": 234523452 
    }
  }
}

Resume an Interrupted Upload

If the video upload is interrupted, it can be resumed.

To resume an upload, send another POST request to the /video-upload/video-id endpoint and use the value for upload_phase.bytes_transfered as the value for offset.

Step 3: Publish the Reel

To end the upload session and publish your video, send a POSTrequest to the /page-id/video_reels endpoint. You can also include any of the additional fields, like description, which can include hashtags, and title.

Be sure the host is graph.facebook.com.

POST Page Video Reels Quick Reference

Example Request

Formatted for readability. Replace bold, italics values, such as page_access_token, with your values.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/page-id/video_reels
    ?access_token=Your_page_access_token
    &video_id=video-id
    &upload_phase=finish
    &video_state=PUBLISHED
    &description=What a beautiful day! #sunnyand72"

On success your app will receive a JSON object with success set to true.

{"success": true}

Get a List of Reels

To get a list of all reels published on your Facebook Page, send a GET request to /page-id/video_reels endpoint.

Be sure the host is graph.facebook.com for this API call.

Note: When using since and until in your GET request, the date for until must be a date after the date for since. For example, if since is 2023-01-31, until must be after 2023-01-31. You can use both parameters, or one or the other. Date formats can be any of the following:

• today, yesterday
• Epoch timestamps (1676057525)
• yyyy-mm-dd (2023-1-31)

curl -X GET "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/page-id/video_reels?access_token=Your_page_access_token"

On success your app will receive a JSON object with information about your published reels such as video ID and published time.

{
  "data": [
    {
      "updated_time": "unix_timestamp",
      "id": "video-1-id"
    },
    {
      "description": "sample_description",
      "updated_time": "unix_timestamp",
      "id": "video-2-id"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Invite a collaborator

Invite a person, a collaborator, to publish your Reel on their Facebook Page.

To publish a reel on a collaborator's Facebook Page you will invite the collaborator to publish your reel on their Facebook Page. When they accept the invitation, the reel will immediately be published on their Facebook Page if the reel has been published, or the reel will be published on their Page when you publish the reel on your Page.

You will need:

• The ID for the collaborator's Facebook Page (for New Page Experience, use the delegate Page ID)
• The ID for the Video you want to share with a collaborator

Limitations

• You can only send 10 collaborator invitation per Page per 24 hours
• You can only publish Reels to other Facebook Pages

Send an Invitation

To invite a collaborator to publish your Reel on their Facebook Page, send a POST request to the /video-id/collaborators endpoint with the target_id parameter set to the ID for the collaborator's Facebook Page.

Formatted for readability.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/video-id/collaborators
  ?target_id=collaborators-page-id 
  &access_token=your-page-access-token"

On success your app will receive a JSON response with the link to the invitation and your collaborator will receive an invite notification.

Example Response

{
  "success": true,
  “collaborator_id”: “collaborators-page-id”
  “invitation_link”: “facebook-url-for-invitation”
}

Get Invitation Status

To get the status for an invitation you sent, send a GET request to the /video-id/collaborators endpoint.

Example Request

Formatted for readability.

curl -X POST "https://graph.facebook.com/v18.0/video-id/collaborators
  ?access_token=your-page-or-user--access-token"

On success your app will receive a JSON response with the invitation status of Accepted, Declined, or Pending.

{
  “id”: “video-id”
  “name”: “collaborators-page-name”
  “invite_status”: “Accepted”
  “invitation_link”: “facebook-url-for-invitation”
}

Error Codes

Common error codes and possible mitigations.

Learn how to customize a reel

Customize your reel to create a richer reels experience for your viewers.

• Add a custom cover photo for your reel
• Add your favorite music to your reel
• Get music recommendations from Meta for new music
• Get music recommendations from Meta for popular music on Facebook

See also

• Get insights for your reels to track engagement
• Learn more about sharing to Android and iOS devices
• Check out the Facebook Reels Publishing API Sample available on Github.
• Check out the Facebook Reels collection on the Postman API Platform