Many of us share a lot of our lives on Instagram—capturing special moments, people, and even the occasional meme. But amidst all the posting, it’s easy to overlook what happens to these photos and videos in the long run. What if you decide to leave Instagram? How can you preserve your memories in another app?
Instagram actually does a commendable job of saving your pictures and video clips, including those in your stories that are set to disappear after 24 hours. Whether you want to archive all your posts for future reference or retrieve a specific memory, there are options available.
Saving new Instagram posts to your phone
The simplest way to ensure that everything you share on Instagram is permanently saved is by saving posts to your phone’s gallery. From there, you can back them up to cloud storage services like Google Photos, Apple Photos, or any other platform you prefer.
Within the Instagram app, you can control these settings. By tapping your profile picture (bottom right) and then the menu button (top right), select Archiving and downloading, and enable all four toggle switches. This will save both posts and stories to your phone’s library, with stories and live broadcasts also archived within Instagram’s own storage.
For stories and reels, you can also manually save them to your phone. To save a story, tap the three dots (top right) and select Save. As for reels, before posting, you can tap the download option (downward arrow) to save your reel.
These steps cover the process of saving your Instagram content to your phone, allowing you to transfer them elsewhere. If you haven’t enabled these features or missed saving something, there are alternate methods to retrieve images and videos from Instagram.
Saving existing Instagram posts
On the web, you can view all your Instagram posts by clicking on Profile and scrolling to find older posts. Click on any post to view a larger version, and then select View archive to access past stories, even if they’ve disappeared from your feed (provided you’ve enabled the save to archive feature mentioned earlier).
To save a picture from the web, click on it and add “/media?size=l” to the URL in your browser’s address bar. This will display a full-size image that you can right-click to save on your computer. For bulk downloading, consider using browser extensions like Esuit Photos Downloader for Instagram on Chrome and Edge. However, saving stories from the web isn’t as straightforward.
On mobile, saving old posts from your profile page isn’t as straightforward, but you can save your stories. From your profile page, tap the menu button (top right), then Archive. Select a story to view it, tap the three dots in the lower right corner, and choose Save photo. However, this feature relies on you enabling story archiving (as mentioned earlier).
Reels can also be saved on mobile from the reels tab on your profile. Open a reel, tap the share button (paper airplane), then select Download. These options for saving stories and reels are separate from the in-app saving while creating posts.
Another method is to export all the data from your Instagram account. In the mobile app, go to your profile icon (bottom right), then the menu button (top right), and navigate to Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Download your information > Download or transfer information and select your account. Ensure to set the date range to All time and the media quality to High. On the web, you can access the same option through More > Settings.
Once Instagram gathers all your data, a download link will be sent to your registered email. This link will grant you access to a comprehensive collection of your Instagram photos, videos, and other data. You can then store and back up these files wherever you prefer.
