Instagram may hold years of your life: vacation photos, reels you spent hours editing, and stories you forgot you posted. The good news is that you can get all of it back with one official tool. Meta's Download Your Information feature lives in Accounts Center, and it packages everything tied to your account into a single export you can keep forever.
The request takes about five minutes to set up. Instagram then builds your file and emails you a download link, usually within 48 hours for most accounts. Large accounts with 5,000+ posts can take longer, and the download link expires after about four days, so grab it as soon as it arrives.
This guide walks through every step, explains the settings that control media quality and date range, and shows you what lands in the export, plus how to back up and share your files afterward. Everything here uses only Instagram's official tools.
Key takeaways
- Meta's Download Your Information tool (in Accounts Center) exports every photo, reel, and story you own
- Most exports arrive within 48 hours, and the download link expires after about four days
- Set Media quality to High, and turn on Story archive before you need it or old stories are gone for good
- Back up to two places, then share originals with ShareIt.onl: 10 files / 200 MB, no sign-up
Step 1: Open the Export Tool in Accounts Center
The export tool is buried a few menus deep, but the path is the same on iPhone and Android.
On the Instagram app
- Go to your profile and tap the menu (three lines) in the top right.
- Tap Accounts Center at the top of Settings.
- Tap Your information and permissions.
- Tap Download your information, then Download or transfer information.
- Pick your Instagram profile, then choose All available information or Some of your information.
If you only want photos and videos, choose Some of your information and check Content (posts, reels, and stories). That keeps the export smaller and faster.
On a computer
Visit accountscenter.instagram.com in a browser, sign in, and follow the same path: Your information and permissions, then Download your information. Desktop is often easier for big exports because the ZIP file downloads straight to your computer instead of filling up your phone.
Step 2: Choose Quality, Date Range, and Format
Before Instagram builds your file, it asks three questions. These settings matter more than most people realize.
- Date range. Pick "All time" for a full backup, or a custom range like "Last year" if you only need recent posts. A custom range can shrink a 6 GB export down to a few hundred megabytes.
- Media quality. Always choose High. The default is lower quality to keep files small, and there is no way to re-request higher quality from an old export.
- Format. Choose HTML if you want to browse your archive like a website. Choose JSON if you plan to move the data into another app. Your photos and videos are identical either way.
Instagram may split big exports into multiple ZIP files, each up to about 2 GB. Download every part, because your media is spread across them.
Tip: A custom date range is the fastest way to shrink a huge export. Narrowing "All time" down to a single year can cut a 6 GB archive to just a few hundred megabytes.
What's Inside Your Export
Once you unzip the download, you'll find a folder structure with your media sorted by type. Here's what to expect:
| Folder or section | What it contains | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| media/posts | Feed photos and videos | Sorted into folders by month and year |
| media/reels | Your published reels | MP4 files, plus caption data |
| media/stories | Stories you posted | Only if Story archive was on |
| media/archived_posts | Posts you archived | Hidden posts are included too |
| media/other | Profile photos, misc uploads | Usually small |
| your_instagram_activity | Comments, likes, saved posts | Metadata, not media |
| messages | DM history and shared media | Only in a full export |
One warning: exported files are the versions Instagram processed at upload, not the untouched files from your camera roll. That's covered in more detail in why Instagram compresses your photos.
Turn On Story Archive Before You Need It
Stories vanish after 24 hours unless Story archive is saving them. Check it now: Settings, then Archiving and downloading, then make sure Save story to archive is on. If it was off, stories you posted before enabling it are gone for good and will not appear in any export.
While you're in that menu, you can also turn on Save story to camera roll, which keeps a local copy of every story the moment you post it. That local copy is often higher quality than the archived version.
Back Up and Share Your Originals
An export sitting in your Downloads folder is not a backup. Copy it to at least two places, for example an external drive plus a cloud folder. If the export lives only on your phone, move it off first; our guide on transferring files from your phone to a PC covers the fastest ways.
When you want to hand the files to someone else, a family member, a client, or your own second device, ShareIt.onl is built for exactly this. Upload up to 10 files or 200 MB in one batch, with no sign-up, and you get an expiring link plus a QR code the other person can scan. Files transfer at full quality with zero compression, which matters when you're moving original photos instead of screenshots. See the full Instagram sharing hub for more workflows.
A Quick Word on Third-Party Downloaders
You'll find dozens of sites and browser extensions that promise to download any Instagram photo, reel, or story, including content from other people's accounts. We don't recommend or name any of them. Using third-party downloaders on content you don't own violates Instagram's Terms of Use and usually infringes copyright, and many of these tools are scams or malware anyway.
The official export gets you everything you actually own, which is what this guide sticks to. If you want to pass along someone else's post, use the built-in options described in how to share posts, reels, and stories the right way.