Instagram is a nice service, complete and functional, but strangely it doesn’t offer options to save content locally. Here are three tools to solve the problem
Many have looked for it, but the function to download Instagram images to your computer is not present on the social network. An oversight? At these levels it is difficult, but no problem because there are some free tools that allow you to do it.
Backup is an important operation, especially for those who have the “mania” of never losing any of the content they publish online. It may happen that you lose the originals, perhaps due to a computer failure, but as long as they are stored on Instagram – in this specific case – we can rest easy. Quiet to a point. How many times has it happened that a social network, web service, or mail site has been targeted by cyber criminals and we’ve risked losing everything? And in some cases it’s even happened? A regular backup of all our content becomes so important. Too bad Instagram doesn’t offer it to its users, so we have to turn to third-party tools. Here are the three best ones out there.
Instaport
A quick and easy way to get a backup of your Instagram account is to use the free Instaport online service. You can download the contents of your social profile in a zipper file and save it to your computer. The first step is to connect to Instaport which, as you’ll see, has a very intuitive home page. The process involves three steps. The first step asks you to enter your Instagram username or, alternatively, the URL, then click Continue. This is a logical request to allow Instaport to retrieve your content. At this point you need to choose your export options. You can export all of your photos, the last 10 photos you took, images within a specific time period, or photos you tagged with a specific hashtag. A new beta feature offers the ability to back up your videos. Once you’ve selected your export options, click Start Export – the task depends on how many photos and videos you’ve posted to Instagram. Once the backup is complete, select the Download your photos command to download the Instagram content in a zipper file. Be warned: sometimes the service doesn’t work for the large number of users who use it.
IFTTT
The online service IFTTT (an acronym for If This, Then That) offers several services that it calls “recipes” among which is also available the one to back up your Instagram account content for online storage. There are, specifically the possibility to save Instagram content on Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive (but only the images). The first step is to register for the service, which is free and, in our case, we use the recipe “Save your Instagrams to Google Drive”. Then click on the box: a warning will appear: “Automatically save your photos to a folder. Keep in mind, it only works for new photos you post” which means that IFTTT will only save new photos, not old ones, to a Goole Drive folder. Activate the operation by moving the cursor to the right and accepting the service’s requests, namely to access your Instagram and Google Drive. When you’re done, remember to press OK to activate the “recipe” and then authorize it with a click on Authorize.
DsgnWorks Instagram Importer WordPress Plugin
If you have a WordPress site, you can back up and display your Instagram photos with via the free DsgnWorks Instagram Importer plugin. The plugin – developed by programmer Justin Sternberg – offers multiple features, including some customization options such as, for example, controlling the content title with location tags and captions, automatically importing videos into the Media Library, and there’s also built-in support for WordPress custom post types. There is also a debugging plug-in in case any errors occur.