Tesla Dashcam & Sentry Mode Recovery · v2.40.2

Deleted your encrypted Tesla footage? Start with a free scan.

Scan your Tesla USB drive for deleted, formatted and corrupted footage, including encrypted clips. View available thumbnails and recovery assessments. Assessments help select footage to export and check; some thumbnails or scores may be unavailable.

Download Free — macOS See how it works

Free: unlimited decryption + 3 recovery exports for deleted and repaired clips · No ClipSalvage account required
Also for Windows x64 & Arm64 — all downloads

100% on-device Notarized by Apple macOS 14+ · Windows 10/11

ClipSalvage showing Tesla clips with All folders, Recent, Saved and Sentry filters.
  1. 1. ConnectYour Tesla USB drive or a disk image
  2. 2. PreviewInspect recoverable footage and confidence
  3. 3. RecoverExport MP4 files and check playback
3
3 free recovery exports, shared by deleted and repaired clips.
6
Tesla cameras identified
0–100
Available confidence scores
$49
One-time · no subscription

Simple Process

Simple, safe, powerful.

Four steps from drive-plugged-in to clips-on-your-desktop. No command line, no recovery jargon.

Step 01

Connect your drive

Stop recording to your TeslaCam USB drive, plug it into your computer and choose Scan USB Directly. Pick the Tesla partition, checking its name and size so you scan the right disk. ClipSalvage only reads the drive, never writes to it: deleted clips stay physically on it until Tesla overwrites them, so the sooner you stop using the drive, the more comes back. Already have a disk image of the drive? You can open that instead.

Choosing the TESLADRIVE partition of a Tesla USB drive for a direct scan in ClipSalvage
Step 02

Scan

ClipSalvage reads the raw drive and carves out Tesla clips — plain MP4s and encrypted containers — finding footage even after filenames are gone or the drive was reformatted, exactly when your file browser shows nothing. Clips stream in as they're found, with live progress and flat memory use regardless of drive size. Leave the drive connected until the scan and the checks on encrypted clips have finished.

An illustrative ClipSalvage scan in progress, showing disk scanned, clips found and data processed; not a performance benchmark
Step 03

Preview

Review found clips, camera estimates and repair status before selecting what to save. Clips appear in a grid with available thumbnails, assessments and camera estimates, grouped by event; the total includes clips still on the drive as well as deleted ones. Encrypted clips decrypt in memory for a free preview. Where the filename didn't survive, an on-device AI model estimates the camera and flags it. Scores and labels are guidance, not a guarantee that every frame survived.

Review found clips, camera estimates and repair status before selecting what to save.
Step 04

Recover

Select individual clips or whole events, click Recover and choose a folder on another drive — never the Tesla USB you are recovering from. Intact clips come out byte-for-byte, with no quality loss. Encrypted clips are decrypted for export; playback depends on the remaining video data — sign in to Tesla if asked — and partially-overwritten clips are rebuilt where possible. Output lands in Tesla's own SavedClips/SentryClips/RecentClips folders, so it drops straight into any Tesla dashcam viewer. Check and back up the saved files before you erase or reuse the drive.

Two clips selected in ClipSalvage with the Recover button ready at the top of the window

Prefer to watch? Pick the video guide for your situation. Both are narrated in English, with German, French and Traditional Chinese audio tracks and subtitles in all four languages — choose the audio under Settings → Audio Track in the player.

Batch decrypt your Tesla clips — Free

For encrypted clips that are still on the drive. Video length 2:20.

Read the batch decryption guide

Recover lost footage with ClipSalvage Pro

For deleted or formatted footage found by a scan. Video length 3:32.

Read the recovery guide

Simple Pricing

How much does ClipSalvage cost?

View available thumbnails and recovery assessments. Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports.

Free
Free
Free download — no time limit
  • Find deleted footage, even after formatting
  • View available thumbnails and recovery assessments
  • Decrypt existing encrypted clips — unlimited
  • Recover surviving footage from partly overwritten clips
  • Export existing encrypted clips free; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports
  • macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows (x64 & Arm64)
Download free
ClipSalvage Pro
$49
One-time purchase — unlimited recovery exports
  • Everything in Free
  • No recovery export limit
  • One-time purchase — permanent license
  • All future updates included
  • Priority email support
  • Try free before you buy — all sales final
  • macOS (Apple Silicon) · Windows (x64 & Arm64)
  • Activate on one device, transfer anytime
Buy ClipSalvage Pro — $49

One download for everyone. Install it free, decrypt as much as you like, and activate Pro with a code if you need deleted clips back.

Download for macOS Download for Windows (x64) Download for Windows (Arm64)

Recovering deleted clips on Windows? Read our USB write tests and their limits. No practical protection is verified.

Your footage never leaves your computer — on every tier

Secure payments by Stripe. Automatic tax calculation included.

EU & UK customers: The free tier lets you verify recovery before purchase. By completing your purchase you give express consent to immediate delivery of the digital content and acknowledge that you thereby lose your statutory 14-day withdrawal or cancellation right (Art. 16(m), Directive 2011/83/EU; reg. 37, Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013). All sales are final, except for rights that cannot be excluded where you live.

On encrypted clips: Tesla encrypts USB clips by default on supported vehicles — those with the AMD Ryzen infotainment computer (Model 3, Model Y, the refreshed Model S and Model X, and Cybertruck) — and every release since software 2026.20 has kept it. On a supported car, every Sentry and Dashcam clip written since that update is an encrypted container unless the owner has switched Controls > Safety > Encrypt Dashcam Recordings off. Clips recorded before the update, clips recorded with that setting off, and clips from cars without the feature (cars with the older Intel infotainment computer, and vehicles in mainland China, where Tesla has not enabled it) are ordinary MP4 files that ClipSalvage recovers as normal; the decryption features simply do not apply to them. Your car’s software version is shown under Controls > Software. ClipSalvage decrypts only clips recorded by a vehicle on the Tesla account that vehicle was linked to at the time of recording: the keys are held by Tesla and released solely to an authenticated sign-in, so footage from someone else’s car cannot be decrypted by this or any other tool. Recovery of deleted or formatted clips also depends on the sectors not having been overwritten — a drive that kept recording may have nothing left to recover, which is why the free scan shows you what survives before you pay.

Capabilities

Built only for Tesla footage.

No command line, no separate media tools, and no uploading private footage to a recovery service.

Encrypted Clip Recovery & Decryption

Supported cars (AMD Ryzen infotainment) encrypt every new Sentry and Dashcam clip by default — since Tesla software 2026.20. ClipSalvage finds those encrypted containers, fetches your decryption keys with an in-app Tesla sign-in when prompted, and exports playable MP4s — using cached keys for those clips. This matters most once a clip is deleted or the drive is formatted: a decryption tool needs the file still listed, and a carving tool looks for the MP4 header an encrypted clip doesn't have. ClipSalvage does both in one pass.

  • Reads Tesla's per-file encrypted clip containers
  • Free in-memory preview with available recovery assessments
  • Tesla sign-in when prompted — cached keys reusable for the same clips
  • Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports.

Automatic Clip Repair

Recover surviving footage from partly overwritten clips. Results depend on the video data that remains; overwritten footage cannot be recreated. Free and Pro use the same repair capabilities.

  • Recover surviving footage from partly overwritten clips
  • View available thumbnails and recovery assessments.
  • Repaired clips are labelled in results
  • Same repair capabilities in Free and Pro

Cluster-Aligned Scanning

Checks for MP4 signatures at filesystem cluster boundaries on exFAT drives. Scan time depends on the drive and its connection.

  • Cluster-aligned MP4 scanning
  • Recovers from formatted drives
  • Works with corrupted file systems
  • exFAT + FAT32 support

Confidence Scoring

Recovery assessments help you judge the footage found. Available confidence scores use structural integrity checks; they are guidance, not recovery probabilities or guarantees of perfect playback. Some clips may have no score while assessment is pending. Verify exported footage in a video player.

  • MP4 header and structure validation
  • Video data and metadata integrity
  • Timestamp plausibility check
  • Tesla-specific dimension bonus

Every Camera Position — AI-Identified

Identifies all Tesla camera angles on both hardware generations: AI4/HW4 cars (2023+) record 6 — front, back, left repeater, right repeater, left pillar, and right pillar; AI3/HW3 cars (pre-2023) record 4, with no pillar cameras. When the original filename survives on the drive, it's recovered byte-for-byte. When the filename has been overwritten, an on-device AI model looks at the clip itself and identifies the camera.

  • Original filename recovery from directory entries
  • AI fallback: MobileNet vision model for overwritten entries
  • Process-of-elimination resolves close calls per Sentry minute
  • AI-labelled clips badged distinctly in the preview

7-Phase Pipeline

Automated processing from scan to results: scanning, database prep, filename recovery, thumbnail generation, confidence scoring, saving, and completion.

  • Real-time progress with ETA
  • Native in-process thumbnail previews
  • Scan resume from interruption
  • Memory-efficient streaming mode

Disk Image Safety

Open an existing disk image to scan it and recover at your own pace. Keep the original drive untouched until you have checked and backed up what you recovered.

  • Open an existing disk image
  • Supports .img, .raw, .dd, .dmg
  • Faster scanning from internal drive
  • Read-only — nothing written to source

Batch Recovery

Select individual clips or entire events, then export in batch. No re-encoding, no quality loss — intact clips are byte-for-byte copies, and a clip whose index had to be rebuilt is labelled Repaired.

  • Select by clip or by event group
  • Original quality preservation
  • Per-clip progress tracking
  • Original filenames when available

Your Data

Your footage stays on your computer.

The ClipSalvage desktop app processes everything locally. The source drive is opened read-only — nothing is ever written to it.

  • All video processing happens on-device. No footage, thumbnails, or disk contents are uploaded to any server.
  • The source drive is read-only. For extra safety, the built-in disk-image workflow lets you scan a copy instead of the drive itself.
  • No account required. Download, scan, and preview without signing up for anything.
  • Encrypted clips may need a Tesla sign-in — through Tesla's own login window — to fetch your clips' decryption keys. Cached keys can avoid repeated requests for the same clips; other recordings may require another sign-in.
  • License activation needs a brief online check. Scanning and recovery themselves never need the internet.
Read the Privacy Policy

Recovery Disclaimer

Data recovery is inherently uncertain. Success depends on factors outside our control: whether deleted sectors have been overwritten, physical drive health, file system corruption extent, and how the drive was used after data loss. ClipSalvage uses best-effort file carving technology and provides confidence scores to indicate expected file integrity, but cannot guarantee recovery of any specific file. We strongly recommend using the free tier to assess recoverability before purchasing a license.

  • Overwritten data cannot be recovered — if new files occupy the same physical sectors, the original data is permanently destroyed.
  • Files under 1 MB or over 100 MB are rejected as outside Tesla's typical clip range.
  • Fragmented files may be incomplete (uncommon — Tesla typically writes sequentially).
  • Physical drive failure requires professional lab recovery — software cannot access dead flash controllers.
  • Original filenames may be lost if directory entries were reused by new files.

Contact: info@clipsalvage.com · Qloud LTD, United Kingdom

When You Need It

Common recovery situations.

For insurance claims, police reports, and hit-and-run incidents: the sooner the drive stops being written to, the more comes back.

Accidental Deletion

Deleted clips from your dashcam folder that you still need.

Formatted Drive

Accidentally formatted your Tesla USB drive and lost everything.

Corrupted File System

Drive showing errors, not recognised, or clips not visible.

Insurance Claims

Need to recover footage for an incident report or legal matter.

Important: stop using the drive as soon as you notice footage is missing. Continued use may overwrite recoverable data.

Urgent recovery questions

Footage may still be recoverable after a format if video data remains. A quick format can leave data behind, but recovery is not guaranteed. Stop using the drive and save recovered clips to another drive. Repaired containers, timing and estimated camera labels may differ from the original files; check the exported footage.
The clip may have been overwritten by newer recordings if your drive was full, or it may still be in a deleted state. Remove the USB drive from the car immediately to prevent further overwrites. Scan it with ClipSalvage — available assessments help you judge found clips; scores may be unavailable. Even partially recovered footage (lower confidence) may contain enough visual data to identify a license plate.
Tesla stores Sentry events in the SentryClips folder, but if the drive runs low on space, older clips are automatically deleted to make room. The deleted data is still on the drive until those sectors are overwritten. ClipSalvage's file carving scans the raw disk sectors — not the file system — so it finds these deleted clips even though they do not show up in the file browser.
ClipSalvage never re-encodes video. A clip the app does not mark Repaired is saved with the video data Tesla recorded. A clip marked Repaired is a rebuilt MP4: its video frames are Tesla's, but its index was rebuilt, footage near the end may be missing, and Timing estimated means its playback duration may differ from the original recording. Available confidence scores assess structural integrity. They do not establish authenticity, evidentiary integrity or acceptance by an insurer or police, and do not guarantee that every frame survived. Check the exported footage. Tell the recipient which clips were repaired, provide the confidence scores as documentation, and keep the drive or a disk image of it as the original evidence.
There is no fixed time limit — what matters most is whether the sectors have been overwritten, not how long ago the files were deleted. A formatted drive left untouched in a drawer gives you the best chance of recovery. A formatted drive put back in the Tesla for one day of driving may have significant overwrites. The rule: stop using the drive the moment you realize footage is missing.

Licensing

How does the ClipSalvage license work?

Decryption is free and unlimited, so it never costs anything on its own. One payment licenses ClipSalvage Pro permanently — no subscription, no expiry: $49 for unlimited recovery exports. After purchase you receive an activation code (SR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX); enter it with your purchase email inside the app to unlock your tier. The license runs on one device at a time and transfers to a new device whenever you need, and every future update is included.

Free Tier

Download and use ClipSalvage for free. Full scanning, preview, thumbnails, and confidence scoring available — encrypted clips included — no payment required, no time limit.

  • Scan your entire drive for recoverable videos
  • View available thumbnails and recovery assessments.
  • 3 free recovery exports, shared by deleted and repaired clips.
  • Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports.
  • No time limit; repeat recovery exports count toward the allowance.

Activating Your License

After purchasing, you receive an activation code by email (format: SR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX). Activate inside the app:

  1. Click "Upgrade" at the bottom of the app's sidebar, then go to "Already purchased? Enter your details:" in the "Get ClipSalvage Pro" window
  2. Enter the email address used for purchase
  3. Enter your activation code (SR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) and click "Activate"
  4. Your license is validated automatically
  5. Enjoy unlimited recoveries — permanently

License Details

  • Payment: One-time purchase of $49 — no subscription, no recurring charges
  • Activation: Email + activation code (SR-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX format)
  • Devices: Activate on one device at a time
  • Transfer: Re-activate on a new device anytime — previous device is deactivated automatically
  • Updates: All future updates included at no extra cost
  • Permanent: One-time purchase, no expiry

Compatibility

System requirements

ClipSalvage runs on macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later — Apple Silicon — and on 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, with a native build for both x64 (Intel/AMD) and Arm (Arm64) PCs. It needs Full Disk Access on macOS, or administrator privileges on Windows, to read the USB drive directly, plus enough free space to hold the clips you recover.

macOS

  • macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
  • Apple Silicon (M-series)
  • Full Disk Access permission required
  • Sufficient storage for recovered videos

Windows

  • Windows 10 or Windows 11
  • 64-bit processor — x64 (Intel/AMD) or Arm64
  • Administrator privileges for raw disk access
  • Sufficient storage for recovered videos

Knowledge base

Tesla USB, explained.

Background reading on how Tesla actually stores dashcam footage, what really happens when you format a USB drive, and why Sentry events disappear. Written for owners trying to understand what's recoverable before they panic.

Browse the full knowledge base

FAQ

Questions.

For urgent recovery questions (insurance, hit-and-run, police reports) see the common recovery situations above.

Footage may still be recoverable after a format if video data remains. A quick format can leave data behind, but recovery is not guaranteed. Stop using the drive and save recovered clips to another drive. Repaired containers, timing and estimated camera labels may differ from the original files; check the exported footage.
View available thumbnails and recovery assessments. Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports.
One-time fee. One payment provides a permanent license. No subscription, no annual renewal. All future updates are included. The license works permanently on one device at a time.
Recovery assessments help you judge the footage found. Available confidence scores use structural integrity checks; they are guidance, not recovery probabilities or guarantees of perfect playback. Some clips may have no score while assessment is pending. Verify exported footage in a video player.
Every Tesla camera position, on both hardware generations. AI4/HW4 cars (2023+) record 6 — front, back, left repeater, right repeater, left pillar, and right pillar; AI3/HW3 cars (pre-2023) record 4 — front, back, left repeater, and right repeater (no pillar cameras). When the original filename survives on the drive, the camera is read from that directly. When the filename has been overwritten, an on-device AI vision model looks at the clip itself and identifies which camera recorded it — AI-labelled clips are badged distinctly in the preview so you can tell filesystem-recovered from AI-identified.
exFAT (Tesla's default) and FAT32. The scanner also works on drives with unrecognized or corrupted file systems by falling back to default 128KB cluster settings. The engine does not require a functioning filesystem — it works by scanning raw disk sectors for MP4 signatures.
Completely. ClipSalvage is read-only — it never writes anything to your drive. You can also open an existing disk image, leaving the original untouched.
Yes. ClipSalvage works with all Tesla vehicles that use USB-based dashcam and Sentry Mode storage — it understands Tesla's file naming and folder structure across all models. Note: cars with the AMD Ryzen infotainment computer encrypt newly recorded clips by default since vehicle software 2026.20 (Controls > Safety > Encrypt Dashcam Recordings). ClipSalvage recovers and decrypts these too — sign in to Tesla when prompted inside the app to fetch your clips' decryption keys, cached keys can avoid repeated requests for the same clips. Clips recorded before the update, with that setting off, or on cars without the feature remain standard MP4 files and are recovered exactly as before.
Yes — on supported vehicles (those with the AMD Ryzen infotainment computer: Model 3, Model Y, the refreshed Model S and Model X, Cybertruck), Tesla encrypts newly recorded clips by default — since software 2026.20 and in every release since; it can be switched off under Controls > Safety > Encrypt Dashcam Recordings. Every clip recorded after the update installs, with that setting on, is a per-file encrypted container rather than a plain MP4, and the decryption keys are held by Tesla, released only to an authenticated Tesla sign-in. ClipSalvage finds encrypted clips, shows available thumbnails and recovery assessments, and decrypts them with available Tesla keys. It can recover surviving footage from partly overwritten clips; repair does not recreate overwritten data. Cached keys may avoid repeat requests for the same clips; other recordings may need another sign-in. Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports. Clips recorded before the update, with the setting off, or on cars without the feature remain standard MP4 files and are recoverable as always.
EncryptedClips contains Tesla’s encrypted recordings, which cannot be played directly as plain MP4 files. Tesla sign-in retrieves available keys for recordings linked to your account. Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports. No time limit; repeat recovery exports count toward the allowance.
Sign in to Tesla when prompted to fetch the keys for the selected clips. Cached keys can avoid repeated requests for the same clips; other recordings may require another sign-in. Unencrypted clips never need a sign-in at all.
Choose Decrypt USB or image, select the source and click Show clips. Sign in to Tesla when prompted, wait for processing, filter by Recent, Saved or Sentry, select clips and click Decrypt. Save to another drive, then verify and back up the MP4s before reusing the USB. Decryption of existing encrypted clips is free and unlimited. Existing clips export free when no repair is needed; deleted and repaired clips share 3 free recovery exports. Pro adds unlimited recovery exports.
You never give ClipSalvage your Tesla password. The sign-in window is Tesla's own page on tesla.com, behind Tesla's own captcha — your credentials go straight to Tesla and are never seen by, typed into, or stored by ClipSalvage. The sign-in is used for exactly one thing: fetching the decryption keys for your own clips, and Tesla never releases a master key — only one-shot keys for the individual files you are recovering. All recovery and decryption run entirely on your machine — no footage, thumbnails, or disk contents are ever uploaded. ClipSalvage receives only the resulting access token — the same one Tesla's own dashcam viewer runs on, so Tesla issues us nothing broader. That token is issued to Tesla's own dashcam sign-in client and carries identity permissions only. It does not include vehicle_device_data or vehicle_cmds — the permissions Tesla's Fleet API requires to read from or send commands to a car — so it cannot unlock, drive, locate or otherwise control your vehicle. It is spent on a single request: asking Tesla to unseal the keys for the clips you selected. It expires on its own in about eight hours and is kept in your operating system's credential vault (macOS Keychain / Windows Credential Manager), encrypted by your OS — never in a plain file, never in a log. Signing out deletes it from your machine. If you'd like to verify any of this before you trust the app with a sign-in, email support@clipsalvage.com — we'll walk you through exactly what to check. You don't have to take our word for it either: run any network monitor while you recover a clip and you'll see your Tesla token go to one place — Tesla's own dashcam endpoint — and nowhere else.
Scanning, recovery, decryption and repair run on your computer. Fetching missing decryption keys requires an online Tesla sign-in when prompted. Cached keys can avoid repeated requests for the same clips. License activation and verification also require internet access.
Read the full recovery guide

Also from Qloud

Recovered your clips? Now watch, cut and share them.

Intact clips come back as the original files — telemetry and all — in Tesla's own folder layout, so they open in any Tesla dashcam viewer. Sentry Clip Viewer is ours: six cameras in sync, consecutive clips joined into one continuous video, a Tesla-style telemetry HUD, and five export modes up to 4K ProRes, including Director Mode for cutting between angles. For the clip you need to keep, and the one you want to share. iPhone, iPad and Mac — $6.99 on the App Store, one time.

View Sentry Clip Viewer

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Qloud LTD, United Kingdom