How to Recover Tesla Dashcam Footage After an Accident

The short answer

Take the drive out of the car. Every minute of recording writes over the space a deleted clip still occupies, and overwritten footage is gone for good.

Then look before you assume. Open the TeslaCam folders on a computer. If the clips are there, you do not need recovery software; if they are there but encrypted, Tesla’s own free viewer at dashcam.tesla.com plays them.

If they were deleted or the drive was formatted, the video is usually still on the drive until something overwrites it. A free scan shows you what survives before you pay anything.

The car recorded it. That is the part people are usually right about. What catches them out is the gap between the incident and the moment they go looking — because in that gap, the footage is often quietly overwritten.

A collision, a hit-and-run while the car sat parked, footage you need for a police report or an insurance claim — the question underneath is always the same one: is the clip still on the drive, and how do you get it back?

Tesla's dashcam writes continuously to a rolling buffer. Recent clips are recycled as space is needed, and on a heavily used drive that window can be short — hours rather than days (see how long Tesla footage stays recoverable). A Sentry event that was saved can still be lost if the drive is reformatted, if the folder is tidied up, or if the car keeps recording over it while the drive sits in the glovebox. None of that requires anyone to have done anything wrong.

1. Stop the car recording over it

Take it out of the car. Use the dashcam icon on the touchscreen to stop recording first, then remove the drive.

Every additional minute of recording is new data written to the same drive, and that is the only mechanism that makes deleted footage permanently unrecoverable. A file that has been deleted is not erased — the space it occupied is marked reusable, and the video sits there untouched until something overwrites it. The clock you are racing is not time since the accident; it is bytes written since the accident.

If the drive is already back in the car and recording, that is not a lost cause. It just means less of the original data is likely to survive.

2. Are the clips still there?

Before assuming anything is lost, look. Plug the drive into a computer and open the TeslaCam folder. Tesla writes clips into SentryClips, SavedClips and RecentClips, one file per camera per minute, each named by its recording-start time and camera position.

If the files are there and they play, you do not need recovery software at all. Copy them somewhere safe — copy, do not move (step 4 explains why) — and stop here.

If they are there but will not play, they are probably encrypted: Tesla software 2026.20 writes each clip as a per-file encrypted container where Tesla has enabled it, which is not everywhere. For those, use Tesla’s own viewer at dashcam.tesla.com: you sign in with your Tesla account, drag in the .mp4 files you want, and they are decrypted locally in the browser. It is free, and for ordinary intact recordings it is the simpler choice — there is no reason to buy anything. It works on the files you hand it rather than on the drive itself, so it covers the clips you can already see and select in the TeslaCam folders. If you would rather have the decrypted files in a folder, ClipSalvage’s decrypt-and-export does that too, free and without limit.

If the folders are empty, the clips you need are missing, or the computer offers to format the drive, go to step 3.

3. Deleted or formatted: what recovery can and cannot do

Recovery here is file carving: reading the drive at the raw block level and looking for the signatures of Tesla's MP4 files directly, without asking the file system where anything is. That is why it still works on a drive that has been formatted, or one your computer offers to reformat because it can no longer read the file table. The file system is the building's directory; carving ignores the directory and searches the building floor by floor.

When a clip is found intact, what comes back is the original file — not a reconstruction, not a re-encode. Byte for byte, the same MP4 Tesla wrote.

What it cannot do

Bring back overwritten data. Deleting a file or quick-formatting the drive leaves the video where it was; only new data written over those sectors destroys it, and nothing recovers what has been overwritten. A drive that kept recording for a week after the event may have nothing left — which is what the free scan is for.
Read a drive that has physically failed. If it clicks, is not detected by any computer, or was exposed to liquid or impact, no software can read it. That is the one case for a professional lab (step 5).
Decrypt someone else’s footage. Where Tesla has enabled encryption, the keys are held by Tesla and released only to an authenticated sign-in on the account the car is on, so clips from another person’s car cannot be decrypted by this or any other tool.
Make a damaged clip whole. A clip whose data was partially overwritten is rebuilt into playable video from what survived and labelled with how much was recovered — shorter, not lower quality.

That distinction between the original file and a rebuilt one matters more than it sounds, because of what is inside the file.

What is inside a Tesla clip

A Tesla dashcam clip is not only video. Tesla embeds telemetry in the video stream itself — the data behind the speed, steering angle, brake and accelerator position, turn signals, heading and Autopilot state that a viewer can display over the footage.

Because it lives inside the video data rather than in a sidecar file, it travels with the clip. If the recovered file is byte-for-byte the original, the embedded telemetry is still in it.

We tested this rather than assuming it

A real 60-second Tesla clip was written to a freshly formatted drive image, deleted, and carved back off the raw blocks. The recovered file hashed identically to the original.

We then ran the harder case: clips damaged badly enough to need repair — one with its metadata index destroyed, one with half the file overwritten. Those come back rebuilt rather than identical, so there is a real question whether the embedded data survives the rebuild. It did, byte for byte, in both.

Reading it back

Recovered clips are written back into Tesla's own folder layout (TeslaCam/SavedClips/, SentryClips/, RecentClips/), so the output folder opens in a Tesla dashcam viewer like any other TeslaCam folder.

Ours is Sentry Clip Viewer, for iPhone, iPad and Mac. It plays all six cameras in sync so you can see the same second from every angle, joins consecutive one-minute clips into one continuous video, and overlays the embedded telemetry as a Tesla-style HUD. It also produces a forensic PDF report — vehicle state, route map, speed and G-force graphs, laid out as a document — which is the output most people in this situation are actually after. Beyond that there are five export modes up to 4K ProRes, including Director Mode for cutting between angles. The joining carries through to export, so a Sentry event spread across six one-minute fragments comes out as one file rather than six. It is $6.99 on the App Store, one time.

Most people reach for it long before anything goes wrong — it is the app for turning a drive full of one-minute fragments into something watchable. The incident case is the same tool used seriously.

If your clips are encrypted (Tesla software 2026.20+)

Tesla has been enabling per-clip USB encryption with software 2026.20, rolling it out by market — it is not enabled everywhere, notably not in mainland China. Where it is enabled, every new clip is written as a per-file encrypted container, with the keys held by Tesla and released only to an authenticated Tesla sign-in. Clips recorded before it reached your region are unaffected.

That changes the mechanics but not the outcome: both apps handle it, and both use the same one-time sign-in to fetch your own keys for your own footage. ClipSalvage recovers and decrypts; Sentry Clip Viewer plays encrypted clips back directly. In both cases the keys are stored locally afterwards, so nothing needs to go back online. There is more on how it works in Tesla USB encryption in 2026.

4. Keeping what you recovered intact

What an insurer or a police force will do with the file is not ours to say — the next section is about that. How to avoid damaging the file on the way to them is.

Copy, do not move. Moving a file off the drive deletes its directory entry on the source, and that is a write to the very drive you are trying to keep untouched. Copying leaves the drive as it was.
Better still, image the drive first. A disk image of the drive can be scanned as many times as you like while the drive itself sits in a drawer. ClipSalvage creates one from inside the app, and whether it is scanning the drive or the image it opens the source read-only and never writes to it.
Keep the original file, not a re-encode. An intact recovered clip is the original MP4, byte for byte, embedded telemetry included. If you want something more watchable to share — all six cameras on one screen, a Sentry event joined into a single video, a PDF report — export that as a separate file and keep the original alongside it.
Keep the filename. Tesla names each clip by recording-start time and camera position (YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS-{camera}.mp4), so the name itself records when the clip starts and which way it faces. ClipSalvage restores the original filename from the directory entry where it survives; where it has been overwritten it generates a Tesla-style name from the MP4’s creation timestamp and a camera position identified by an on-device model, and badges those clips so you can tell filesystem-recovered from model-predicted.
Keep the score with the file. Every recovered clip carries a 0–100 structural score (see below). Pass it on with the footage rather than in place of it.
Encrypted clips: the export is the decrypted MP4. Where Tesla has enabled encryption, what you hand on is the decrypted file ClipSalvage writes to your output folder; the encrypted container on the drive is only read, never altered.

What we are not going to tell you

We build recovery and playback software. We are not lawyers, we are not loss adjusters, and we are not going to tell you what your insurer will accept, what a police force will do with a file you hand them, or whether any of this is admissible anywhere. Those answers vary by jurisdiction, by insurer, and by case — which is exactly why a software vendor is the wrong person to answer them.

What we can tell you is what the file is. A recovered clip is the original, unmodified footage, and ClipSalvage scores each one from 0 to 100 on seven structural factors — signature validity, video data presence, metadata integrity, timestamp plausibility and so on. That score is shown for every clip, and it can be provided alongside the files. What weight anyone gives it is their call, not ours.

5. What it costs

Three prices are on the table, and the drive decides which one applies.

Nothing, if the clips are still there. Unencrypted clips are ordinary MP4 files; encrypted ones open in Tesla’s viewer at dashcam.tesla.com. ClipSalvage’s scan, preview, decryption and export are free without limit.
Software, if they were deleted or the drive was formatted but a computer can still read it. ClipSalvage scans the whole drive and previews every recoverable clip with its confidence score for free, and the first three recoveries of deleted clips are free too; Pro is a one-time purchase ($49) that adds unlimited recovery of deleted and formatted clips. Nothing expires and all sales are final, which is why the free scan comes first. Two alternatives from our comparison: PhotoRec is free, open source and carves unencrypted MP4s if you are comfortable on the command line, without filenames, camera labels or previews; general-purpose recovery apps ($50–$100+) cover a drive that also held other files.
A lab, if the drive itself has failed. A professional data-recovery lab charges $300–$1,500+, typically takes 1–4 weeks, and your footage leaves your possession. It is the only route for physical damage — and for any drive the computer can still read, software is faster, cheaper, and keeps the footage on your own machine.

When it is worth trying

The honest answer is that you find out by looking, and looking is free. ClipSalvage scans the whole drive, generates thumbnails, and shows you every recoverable clip with its confidence score before you pay anything. If the footage you need is not there, you will know within a few minutes for a 128 GB drive, and it will not have cost you.

If it is there: decrypting and exporting encrypted clips is free and unlimited, and the first three recoveries of deleted clips are free. Beyond that, Pro is $49 once, adding unlimited recovery of deleted and formatted footage.

Frequently asked questions

There is no fixed window — what matters is how much has been written to the drive since. A drive removed from the car within minutes is in far better shape than one that kept recording for a week, regardless of the calendar.

Until something overwrites it, yes. Deletion marks the space reusable; it does not erase the video. That is the whole basis of file carving.

No. An intact recovered clip is the original file, byte for byte — not re-encoded. Clips damaged enough to need repair are rebuilt from what survived, so those are shorter rather than lower quality.

It is embedded in the video stream, so it travels with the clip. We verified this on a deleted clip carved back off a formatted drive image, and on clips damaged badly enough to require repair — the embedded telemetry came back byte-identical in each case.

No. We are not qualified to and it varies by insurer and jurisdiction. We can tell you what the file is: the original footage, with a structural confidence score you can pass on with it.

Formatting rewrites the file table, not the video. Carving reads the raw blocks and ignores the file table, so a formatted drive is a normal case, not a lost one.

If the clips are still on the drive and open normally, yes. It decrypts them in your browser, it is free, and for ordinary intact recordings it is the simpler choice. It works on the files you hand it rather than on the drive itself, so it covers the clips you can already see and select in the TeslaCam folders.

Copy, do not move. Moving deletes the file's directory entry on the source, which is a write to the very drive you are trying to keep untouched. Better still, create a disk image of the drive first and scan that. ClipSalvage opens the drive or the image read-only and never writes to the source.

$300–$1,500+ and typically 1–4 weeks, and only when the drive has physically failed: it clicks, is not detected by any computer, or was exposed to liquid or impact. For a drive the computer can still read, software recovery is faster, cheaper, and keeps the footage on your own machine.

Sources & references

On encrypted clips: decryption applies to clips recorded after Tesla enables software 2026.20 USB encryption in your region. Tesla rolls this out by market, and it is not enabled everywhere — notably not in mainland China. Where it has not been enabled, your clips are ordinary MP4 files and ClipSalvage recovers them as normal. ClipSalvage and Sentry Clip Viewer decrypt only clips recorded by a vehicle on your own Tesla account: 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.

How to recover Tesla dashcam footage after an accident