How to download Instagram posts and reels
Short answer
For your own content, Instagram's own data download gives you everything in full quality and is the correct method. For a handful of other people's posts, saving in-app or a browser method is enough. For collecting many posts from many accounts on an ongoing basis, you need automated bulk downloading — which is against Instagram's terms and does not grant you any right to reuse what you collect.
Key points
- For your own content, use Instagram's Download Your Information — full quality, no third-party tool, entirely sanctioned.
- Instagram's in-app Save only bookmarks a post; it does not put a file on your device.
- Automated bulk collection is the only practical answer at scale, and it breaches Instagram's terms.
- Downloading does not transfer copyright. Reusing someone's content commercially without permission is infringement regardless of how you obtained the file.
If it is your own content: use Instagram's data download
This is the option people overlook, and for your own archive it is strictly the best one.
In the app, go to your profile, then Settings, then Accounts Centre → Your information and permissions → Download your information. Request a copy, choose the date range and format, and Instagram emails you a link. You get your photos and videos at the quality you uploaded, plus captions and metadata.
It is free, it is sanctioned, and no third-party tool ever touches your account. If your goal is 'back up everything I have posted', stop here.
For a few posts: in-app and browser methods
- Save (bookmark) — the ribbon icon collects posts into a private collection. Useful for reference, but nothing is downloaded to your device and it disappears if the original is deleted.
- Screen recording / screenshot — fine for personal reference, poor quality, and obviously unsuitable for anything you republish.
- Browser developer tools — you can locate and save the underlying media file from a post's page. Fiddly, but no third-party service sees your account.
- Third-party downloader sites — paste a post URL, get a file. Convenient, but many are ad-laden or handle data poorly, and none work on private accounts. Never enter your Instagram login into one.
No legitimate download method needs your Instagram password. Any site asking for it is harvesting credentials — leave.
At scale: automated bulk collection
If your workflow needs the last fifty posts from ten accounts, refreshed weekly, manual methods collapse. That is what automated collection tools do: walk a profile's grid, open each post, and save the media — including every slide of a carousel — into a local folder.
The practical requirements worth insisting on:
- Carousel handling — a four-image post should produce four files, not one.
- Deduplication — an index of what is already saved, so repeat runs only fetch new posts.
- Reels support — video, not a thumbnail.
- Local storage — files on your machine, not uploaded to someone else's server.
- Pacing — collecting hundreds of posts as fast as possible is exactly the pattern that gets an account restricted.
Instagram's terms prohibit collecting data by automated means without permission. Automated bulk downloading breaches that, and carries the same account risk as any other automation.
What you can legally do with what you download
This matters more than the method and gets skipped almost everywhere.
Downloading a file does not give you any rights to it. The person who made the photo or video owns the copyright, and that is unchanged by how you obtained a copy.
- Personal reference, research, mood-boarding — generally fine.
- Reposting with credit — still infringement without permission. Credit is courtesy, not a licence.
- Using it in your own marketing or a paid product — infringement, and the case where people actually get pursued.
- Re-uploading as your own content — infringement, and likely to get the account actioned as well.