The short version
- Copy the Instagram link (••• menu → Copy link).
- Paste it into the downloader.
- Press Download and pick your quality.
That covers 95% of cases. The rest of this page is the 5% — story links, highlight ids, carousels, iPhone save behaviour and what to do when a link refuses to resolve.
Reels
Open the Reel, tap the ••• (or the paper-plane share
icon) and choose Copy link. You'll get something like
instagram.com/reel/C8QltNPRxJ_/. Paste it into the
Reels downloader.
If you need the audio from a Reel you made on its own, use MP3 on the result card — that saves the original audio track without re-encoding it. Don't use it on someone else's music: commercial tracks are licensed to Instagram for playback inside the app, and that licence does not extend to you keeping a copy.
Stories
You don't need a story link. Type @username or paste the
profile URL into the
Stories downloader and it
returns every Story that account currently has active. Direct
/stories/username/ links work too.
Two things to remember: Stories expire after 24 hours, so yesterday's is genuinely gone — and a Story being publicly visible doesn't make it yours. Save your own freely; for anyone else's, get their permission first.
Highlights
Open the Highlight on the profile, tap ••• →
Copy link. The URL contains the highlight id:
instagram.com/stories/highlights/17896518372017015/. Short
share links (instagram.com/s/…) also work — we decode them.
Paste it into the
Highlights downloader and
use Download all as ZIP to take the whole reel at once.
Photos and carousels
A carousel is a post with multiple slides. One link returns all of them — up to Instagram's 20-item limit — and mixed photo/video carousels are handled correctly. Use the Posts & Carousel downloader and grab the ZIP rather than tapping through slide by slide.
On Android
Chrome saves straight to Downloads. To get files into your
gallery, move them to Movies or Pictures, or
install our app, which files everything correctly and keeps an offline
library.
On iPhone and iPad
Safari saves to the Files app. To get a video into Photos: open Downloads (the arrow icon in the address bar), long-press the file and choose Save to Photos. For images you can long-press the preview thumbnail directly and pick Add to Photos.
On Windows, macOS and Linux
Nothing special — the file lands in your browser's download folder. Desktop is also the best place to grab large highlight ZIPs.
When a link won't resolve
- Private account. Nothing to do — we only reach publicly visible content, deliberately.
- Deleted or archived post. The link is dead upstream, not here.
- “No stories”. The account almost certainly hasn't posted in the last 24 hours.
- Expired download link. Instagram's media URLs are signed and time-limited. Paste the link again for a fresh one.
- Instagram rate-limiting. Wait a minute and retry — it clears on its own.
Please respect the creator
Only download content you created, own the rights to, or have the rights-holder's permission to save. Copyright stays with whoever made it, and a single post can have several owners — the footage, the photographs and the music can each belong to someone different. Reposting, monetising or passing off someone else's work is infringement, and no tool changes that. If you're a rights holder, our DMCA page explains how to have material blocked.