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How to generate a personal access token

Every request to the Vimeo API requires an authentication token. The authentication token tells us who is making the request and what actions that user can perform. This article explains how to generate an authentication token for the Vimeo API.

In this article:

What to know before generating a personal access token

  • To get started, you will need to create an API app in our Developer Portal. This is what interacts with the API and requests authentication. Learn how to create one at How to create an API app
  • A personal access token is a unique code used to authenticate your API requests. 
  • This token can be “Authenticated”, meaning it is associated with your Vimeo account and can access your account's and videos’ private metadata, or “Unauthenticated”, meaning it is only authorized for your API app and can only be used to read metadata that is public on Vimeo.com. 
  • If you need other users to grant your app access to their Vimeo accounts, an access token must be generated using one of our other available authentication workflows. 
    • Complete documentation on our Authentication workflows is available on our Developer site at "Working with Authentication." 
  • Keep your token secure. Anyone with access can use it to make requests on behalf of your app or account.

How to generate a personal access token

You can generate a personal access token from your Apps page on Vimeo. To do so: 

  1. Visit your Apps page.
  2. Select the app you want to authenticate with, or create an app if you have not done so.
  3. Select Generate Access Token in the left-hand navigation column under the Authentication header. 
    The 'Generate Access Token' option highlighted in the 'Authentication' section on the left-side toolbar of the App's settings page.
  4. Select Authenticated (you) if you need to interact with private data on your account. Select Unauthenticated if you only need to read public metadata.

The 'Authenticated (you)' and 'Unauthenticated' radio button options, highlighted as a choice for generating an access token.

  1. If you select Authenticated, then under the Scopes heading, check the capabilities you would like to grant the token. You can find definitions for these scopes on our Developer Site. 
    • ⚠️Note: To access nonpublic videos or nonpublic metadata, you must select the ‘private’ scope in addition to any other scopes you need. If you choose only ‘public’, you will not be able to access private information.
    • ai — Enables access to Vimeo AI API endpoints (transcription, subtitle translation, audio dubbing, AskAI). Required for Enterprise users who want to trigger AI actions programmatically.
      The 'Private' scope checkbox highlighted, showing it must be selected to make other permission scopes available."
  2. Select Generate. The page will reload, and the token will appear unobscured in the Personal Access Tokens section.
  3. Copy the token string and store it in a secure location. This token can be used in your scripts or apps to interact with the Vimeo API.

Suggested next steps

Visit our Developer Docs to read more about working with authentication.

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