It may be that you’re transferring your Instagram account or realigning your brand. Or maybe you’ve uploaded so much content to Instagram over the years, you want to consolidate it all. Whatever the reason, if you are looking to back up and download all your Instagram content, you can follow these quick steps to get your content saved.
First of all, you will need to do this on the desktop version of Instagram (not on a mobile device). Go to instagram.com and log in with your account credentials.
Once logged in, go to the profile icon in the upper right corner, and click on Settings.
From the left side bar, go to the Privacy & Security tab. Then scroll down and click on Request Download under the Data Download section.
The next screen will confirm the email to send information to and ask you to choose the format you want for download (HTML or JSON).
HTML format makes your content easy to view and recognize. JSON format will make your content easier to save for upload to another platform or system.
Once you choose the option you want, the next screen will ask you to verify your password and then they will email you a file with all your data. Depending on the amount of data you have, they say it can take up to 48 hours to receive the email.
When you receive your email, it will provide a link that redirects you to Instagram. Again, it’s better to do this on your desktop. You’ll need to enter your Instagram password and 2FA code they send you for verification (if you have multifactor authentication enabled).
You’ll end up on this screen confirming your identity and providing you ANOTHER link to click on to download the files.
Click “Download Information” and you’ll get a zip folder with your files.
You can then save the files to your desktop or other file destination for you to use as needed.
With your downloaded data, you’ll get a long list of information, including:
- Account information
- Comments
- Contacts
- Content (which breaks down further to types of content like Reels, Stories, posts, etc.)
- Followers and Following
- Information about you
- Likes
- Messages
- Reports
- Saves
- Topics
But, all content in these folders are saved in the file format you chose, like HTML and are only viewable in a browser format.
Instagram is an interesting platform, so I’m glad to see that they’re letting people download/backup their content and information. It’s an important symbol of good faith and trust by the platform to allow for users to see what sorts of data any given website has about them.
Thank you for putting this article together. I appreciate your perspective on this.
Thanks Bret! And I agree it’s good that they’re making this function available.