How to save all your old Instagram stories and posts

Instagram is where we share life's highlights—from special events and loved ones to the occasional hilarious meme. But amidst the constant posting, we often overlook the fate of our photos and videos. What happens to your content if you leave Instagram? How do you access those memories later, perhaps in a different app?

Fortunately, Instagram does a great job preserving your pictures and videos, even ephemeral Stories that vanish after 24 hours. Whether you want to keep everything or just retrieve a specific memory, you have several options.

Saving New Instagram Posts to Your Phone

The simplest way to ensure your Instagram posts are permanently saved is to automatically save them to your phone's gallery. From there, you can easily back them up to cloud services like Google Photos or Apple Photos.

To enable this, open the Instagram app, tap your profile picture (bottom right), then the menu button (top right). Select Archiving and downloading, and activate all four toggle switches. This saves posts and Stories to your phone's library and also keeps Stories and live broadcasts in Instagram's archive.

For Stories and Reels, you can also manually save them. For Stories, tap the three dots (top right), then Save. For Reels, before posting, locate the download arrow icon at the bottom of the screen and tap it.

This covers saving your Instagram content to your phone, allowing you to transfer it elsewhere. If you haven't enabled these features or need to recover past content, other methods exist.

Saving Existing Instagram Posts

On the web, access your Instagram profile by clicking Profile. Scroll to find older posts; clicking on one displays a larger version. Click View archive at the top to see past Stories (provided you've enabled archive saving).

To save a picture, click it and add "/media?size=l" to the end of the URL in your browser's address bar. This provides a full-size version you can right-click and save. For bulk downloads, consider the Esuit Photos Downloader for Instagram browser extension (Chrome and Edge). However, reliably downloading Stories from the web isn't possible.

On mobile, saving old posts from your profile is less straightforward (screenshots and cropping are an option), but saving Stories is easy. From your profile, tap the menu button (top right), then Archive. Tap a Story, then the three dots (bottom right), and select Save photo (requires story archiving).

Reels can be saved from the Reels tab (movie clapboard icon): Tap the Reel, then the share button (paper airplane), scroll right, and choose Download. These methods work independently of saving during creation.

Alternatively, export your entire Instagram data. On mobile, tap your profile icon (bottom right), then the menu button (top right), then Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Download your information > Download or transfer information. Select your account, choose All time for the date range, and High for media quality. On the web, this option is found under More > Settings.

Once Instagram compiles your data, a download link will be sent to your email, providing access to all your photos, videos, and other account information for safekeeping and backup.

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