How to Download Videos and Photos From Instagram

The great Facebook outage of 2021 is over (for now), but in the DNS snafu that took down the popular yet controversial social network, there was collateral damage. Namely, other services owned by Facebook, including WhatsApp and Instagram, also went dark, and along with them, your digital memories. That's why it's smart to occasionally back up your social accounts, even if they're already in the cloud—such as all your Insta-pics. We'll show you how.

But what about memories you've seen posted by others? As on Facebook or YouTube, there are copyright and revenue-earning reasons not to grab someone else's video. But we know you'll only use our instructions on how to download photos and videos from Instagram for good.

Download Your Instagram Content

The steps to do this couldn't be simpler. On the desktop, navigate to instagram.com, click your avatar icon at the upper right and select Settings > Privacy and Security. Click the link under Data Download that says Request Download.

In the mobile app, the steps are slightly different. Go to your Profile (the icon at the lower right), then click the 3-line menu at the upper right to select Settings > Security > Download Data.

You'll see a Get a Copy of Your Information page. On the desktop, you get two choices—either download it in an easy-to-navigate HTML format or get it as a JSON data file that you can import into other services. Pick one and click Next. You'll then have to re-enter your Instagram password and click Request Download.

On the mobile app, you don't get the choice. You just click Request Download.

Instagram promises to have a link to you within at least 48 hours, as it might take that long if you have a lot of data saved to your account. I got mine in less than a minute. You can see it here, with a warning that the link in the email will stop working after four days because "it may contain personal information."

To download on the desktop, enter your password (and if you have two-factor authentication on, the second authentication code), and you'll again be taken to Instagram.com, where you can grab the compressed file (in ZIP format). I'm not the biggest Instagrammer by any means, and my file was 105MB, so expect a hefty amount of data if you've been uploading for years.

Once you extract the data, if you got the HTML version, just click the index.html file to get started navigating it all. It'll include comments, contacts, account info, and a lot more. For the important stuff, scroll down the page to Content to find Posts, Profile Photos, and Stories. (Yes, all those "ephemeral" Stories you posted that disappeared to others after 24 hours are there.) If you want the actual video and image files, look in the downloads under for a Media folder.

Download Others' Video and Pics from Instagram

Saving images and videos from Instagram isn't easy. You can't just long-press a finger on a posted pic in the app for a save option, nor even right-click to save on one in the desktop browser. That goes double for video.

The only way to get a third-party's Instagram content saved to your device is with a third-party tool. One of the most versatile is ad-supported Toolzu. It will let you download a person's profile pic, videos, photos, even vids in Stories or in IGTV (now Instagram Video). It won't do Reels, the Instagram version of a TikTok clip. All you need is the exact URL to get a specific photo or video.

However, if you use the Profile downloader on Toolzu, you only need to enter the person's Instagram user name, and it brings up the last 12 of the posts for easy downloading as a JPG for stills or an MP4 for videos. For anything older than those 12 posts, you need the URL. Toolzu works like a charm on mobile, too.

Grabbing a specific link from Instagram isn't always easy. While on a desktop you can usually right-click to Copy Link Address, but it doesn't always work in all areas. In Stories, for example, even with a desktop browser you'll have to pause the video and copy the URL in the address bar; on mobile, as a Story video plays, you can click the 3-dot menu and select Copy Link.

Toolzu is far from the only tool that can handle Instagram downloads. Desktop tools like our favorite for YouTube downloads, 4K Video Downloader, can handle most of the chores (but it seems to choke on Instagram Reels). One that worked well in tests was an ad-supported, multi-lingual website helper called iGram—it even supports Reels, if you can get the specific URL of a video. It doesn't have the batch ability that Toolzu offers.

You've now got the tools and info you need to put almost all of Instagram on your own hard drive. Use your powers only for good.

About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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