How to Download Your Instagram Data

By Leah Nieman | May 29, 2018 |

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How to Download Your Instagram Data

Over the past month I saw so many beautiful photos of proms and graduation parties. It made me realize we are digitally recording our kids’ treasured milestones and posting them to social media.

No longer do we have photo albums or scrapbooks. We have digital albums and timelines on Facebook and Instagram.

But what happens if these platforms go away? If you are worried about losing the only images you may have of your family’s special moments, don’t worry. It’s easy to download your Instagram data. And, if you’ve already downloaded your Facebook data, you’ll be surprised at how easy downloading your Instagram data is.

Here are 5 Steps to Download Your Instagram Data

1. Go to your Instagram Account >Settings
Under Privacy and Security select Data Download.

2. Let Instagram know what email address they should use to send the file containing your Instagram data.

3. Enter your password.

4. You’ll see a confirmation screen. Now you just wait for an email with your Instagram data. Depending on how many photos and videos you have, this can take up to 48 hours. Mine came within 20 minutes.

5. The email will contain a link where you can download your Instagram data.

Now You Have Your Instagram Data, What Do You Do?

It will come as a zipped file. You’ll need to extract (unzip) the file first. Within the folder you’ll see a folder for your photos, videos, direct, and stories. Go through these images and videos. Save any images and videos you want to keep. I suggest organizing master photo and video folders for your family.

Be sure to save a copy to an external hard drive and a copy to the cloud. You don’t need multiple copies of the same image and video on your computer. Having excessive numbers of unorganized photos and videos on your computer will bog it down and make finding what you need harder.