You can’t directly download Instagram pictures to your phone or computer from the app or from the photo’s URL. This is supposedly to protect copyright on photos. However, preventing you from downloading your own photos is ridiculous: they are yours! And given that there are workarounds to download any photo on IG, disabling this inside the app just makes more work for users. But that’s the case for now.
Two ways to download Instagram photos:
1) Google Chrome Developer Tools (best way to download to your computer):
- Open the Instagram image in Google Chrome and click to pop it out (full view).
- Right click (on Mac: CTRL+click) the image and select “Inspect.”
- You’ll see the Elements view. Hit CTRL+F then enter “jpg” so you can find the jpg URLs in the code.
- Click the down arrow to the right of the finder bar to see the next instance of “jpg” until your photo is highlighted (blue tinted/selected like below). It will probably be the second jpg instance (the first is your avatar).
Find the jpg URL that is your photo
- Highlight the jpg URL and copy it. It’s fine if you highlight the whole paragraph which is more than just the image URL, for example:
<img class=”_2di5p” src=”https://instagram.fmkc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/t51.2885-15/e35/21827421_172300296664014_7469834922526507008_n.jpg” style=””> - Just paste the whole thing into a new browser window and delete the extra characters. So you’ll have just the URL (beginning with https and ending in .jpg), for example:
https://instagram.fmkc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/t51.2885-15/e35/21827421_172300296664014_7469834922526507008_n.jpg - Right click (or on Mac CTRL+click) and hit Save Image As.
2) DownloadGram.com (alright way to download to computer or phone)
This website worked on one photo for me, but on the second I got an error. Give it a whirl if you don’t like dealing with code in method #1.
Note: Alternatives InstaSave and Dinsta are garbage. You can hardly tell which parts of the site are CTAs vs. ads. They look like virus farms. Avoid.
Oh and don’t forget this fun stipulation which you’ve agreed to in Instagram’s Terms and Conditions:
Instagram (owned by Facebook) can legally save and sell your photos to an advertising agency.
How to download Instagram photos using DownloadGram:
- Go to https://www.instagram.com/
- Find the Instagram picture you want to save and click on it.
- Copy the photo’s URL from the web address bar in your browser.
- Go to https://downloadgram.com/
- Paste the photo’s URL into the box with the auto-generated Instagram link, above the Download button.
Paste the Instagram photo URL here.
- Click Download. Then, click the resulting Download Picture button to save your image.
Looking for help keeping your profile private, knowing if someone saw that you liked a photo, or understanding how blocking works? Check out my top Instagram help posts:
