Instagram

Instagram
URL	https://www.instagram.com/
Status	Online!
Archiving status	Not saved yet
Archiving type	Unknown
IRC channel	#archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

Instagram is a photo sharing website which has been around since its first appearance on the iOS App Store in October 2010. It has been owned by Facebook since 2012, but Facebook's influence on the platform had been mostly unremarkable until recent years. Although it started off allowing just image posts, it has since added the ability to share video clips in posts and as part of "Reels", and also allows live-streaming similar to what one can find on YouTube or Twitch. It also allows the creation of "Stories" that disappear to other users after 24 hours unless added to a Highlight, no doubt inspired by the functionality of self-deleting apps like Snapchat, which probably inspired YouTube and Twitter to then copy the copied concept with its own "Stories" and "Fleets", respectively.

They got rid of Photo Maps in September 2016, although a map feature later resurfaced in 2025.

Archiving

• SPN does not work.
• ArchiveBot sometimes works for very limited amount of features, and is quite unstable.
  • https://www.instagram.com/[Username]/ does not work, even my residential only allows 3 views per session + IP.
  • You will have to login yourself and retrieve the posts URL.
  • Posts can have 2 different URL formats: https://www.instagram.com/[Username]/p/[ID]/ and https://www.instagram.com/p/[ID]/; grabbing both might make it easier to find it in the future.
  • For posts that include multiple images, only the first 2 will be grabbed.
  • Reels, Stories, Highlights and Live cannot be grabbed. Only a limited amount of comments may be grabbed.
  • A blank page may be grabbed if the job is run too fast, with incorrect configuration, or if the pipeline has a bad IP reputation.
  • "!ao <" job can grab multiple posts as one job, but no guarantee every post will be grabbed correctly.
  • Instagram needs a high delay to avoid ratelimiting, 20000-30000 appears to work for me for grabbing posts, cdninstagram.com urls do not appear to have a ratelimit, and the signed URL is valid for a long time (48+ hours).
  • https://static.cdninstagram.com/rsrc.php can be safely ignored.
  • Try to limit to 1 Instagram/Meta job per pipeline.
  • Useragent Firefox appears to work.
  • Viewing archived images in Wayback Machine may require some technical knowledge.
  • TL;DR: Just use something else, unless Wayback Machine authenticity or discoverability is important.
• archive.today sometimes works.
• User:TheTechRobo/Mnbot rarely works.
• https://github.com/instaloader/instaloader^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
• https://github.com/upintheairsheep2/InstaUp^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
• https://github.com/mikf/gallery-dl^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
• Browsertrix Crawler might be useful for making URL lists. (Untested, Unrecommended for actual archiving)
• No Login^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}: “This is a Mozilla Firefox Add-On to access social media websites without logging in, by removing login popups, bypassing other banners, etc.”
• Services: https://fastdl.app/^{[IA•Wcite•.today]} https://imginn.com/^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}

Chromebot

Before the end of its life, Chromebot was blocked by Instagram. However, it was possible to partially mitigate these problems by using http://insta-stalker.com/^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}, a third-party client for Instagram. Chromebot has since been decommissioned and insta-stalker no longer seems to exist (as of December 2021^[update]). However, it is still possible to archive it using ArchiveBot by getting a list of profile URLs from snscrape, uploading it to transfer.sh, and passing it into ArchiveBot using !ao's < functionality. This has since been automated using the socialscrape bot.

While these grabs of Instagram include the data, because of how much JavaScript it relies on, the Wayback Machine cannot play these archives back.

For more information, see old version of Chromebot's page, in the Instagram.com section.

Accessibility

Bibliogram is an alternative front-end of Instagram; meaning, you could probably view Instagram posts or user pages without having to deal with annoying JavaScript. In September 2022 the main instance of Bibliogram at https://bibliogram.art/ stated that it would likely shut down. There is another instance of it at https://bibliogram.org/ or https://bibliogram.froth.zone/ or https://bibliogram.1d4.us ( list of instances: https://git.sr.ht/~cadence/bibliogram-docs/tree/master/docs/Instances.md and https://farside.link/ ).

As of late 2025, https://imginn.com/ sorta works to list images of a profile and create direct links to them. Unfortunately, list pages require user interaction to load and thus hard to archive. https://kilogram.makeup might be of interest, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

Additional details

API

Adverse API changes such as June 2016 API scandal – see:

• Instagram to third-party developers: drop dead - Zeldman on Web & Interaction Design (June 2016)
• Instagram Kills Off Feed Reading Apps - TechCrunch (November 2015)
• API changes rendered some web-apps such as InstaPort.me unfunctional and some (e.g. Webstagram: Websta.me) heavily crippled.

Post deletions/archivals

• Instagram gives its users the ability to "archive" posts as an alternative to deleting them completely, allowing users to restore them at a later time if they wish. For viewers the end result is the same, the post disappears as if it was permanently deleted.
• Some pages such as company accounts regularly archive or erase old posts (such as SamsungMobile: Erased everything from 2013 to 2016.)
• List of vanished content such as cross-advertisements (advertising each other) of larger entertainment Instagram pages.
  • Those advertisements are usually deleted within days. Many of them have gone lost during the past years.

July 2024 Stories/Highlights data loss incident

Instagram suffered an unspecified "technical issue" that though fixed by the end of July 2024, resulted in the loss of some archived Stories and Stories within Highlights, which Meta said were unrecoverable on their end. Affected Stories, when viewed, were replaced by a message stating "Due to a technical issue, this story is no longer available. While we've since fixed this issue, your story can't be restored. Stories affected by this issue will be automatically removed from your archive by July 2025."

Those who had the "Save story to gallery" option enabled in "Archiving and downloading" in Settings may be able to recover a local copy of any affected Story, but no functionality was made available by Meta to be able to restore lost Stories from end-user devices, other than to re-upload it as a new Story.

Website

• Unlike Twitter, Instagram's usability had always been heavily restricted via their desktop website requiring to use the mobile phone app for full functionality. Over time, more app-only functionality has been added from the web. In 2021, uploading pictures from the desktop website was finally added.
  • Original desktop website functionality: Viewing, liking, commenting photos, videos, view like counts, access settings, live image gallery banner(←removed since 201506 website layout minimalisation.)
  • Since 2017: Uploading images through mobile website possible, but not desktop website. (former is accessible through desktop browser by user agent spoofing or viewport size spoofing)
    • Later: Adding effects and cropping image possible through mobile website.
  • Since 2018: Comment liking possible through mobile + desktop website. (Feature introduced on December 6th 2016 in mobile app).^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
  • Removed feature: Badges^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}.
  • Volatile: "Instagram Stories" at Wikipedia.
  • https://isdb.pw/ – Database of "Instagram Stories" at Wikipedia from popular accounts. (Dead)
  • "EU GDPR" at Wikipedia §20 ("Data Portability" at Wikipedia) obligated Instagram create export (data download) feature. But it may not include all information. Possible excluded (thus lost) information:
    • URL/ID of images one commented to
    • Comments on one's own Instagram page, including those from other users.
    • Comments that mention/reply to one's comment
    • Comment ID's (if such thing exists on Instagram)
    • User ID number.
    • User ID numbers of other people (people you follow, people who follow you)
    • Full URL and target users+ID's of liked pictures+comments.
    • Usernames, user ID's and positions of marked users onto an image.
    • Likes on oneself's comments (from users, user display names, user ID's)
    • Information showed by Instagram Export Tools:
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/former_usernames
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/former_full_names
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/former_bio_texts
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/former_links_in_bio
      • https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/current_follow_requests
  • Instagram has different types (formats) of URL's and ID's. All of the following URL's refer to the same Instagram post:
    • https://www.instagram.com/p/BxXpcUcAXXz/^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
    • https://ingram.life/u/instagram/2042283222032807411^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
    • http://picdeer.com/media/2042283222032807411_25025320^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
    • File location (includes file name): https://scontent-dus1-1.cdninstagram.com/vp/1acf4035349e14f63bfa6230f7b1dc69/5D639209/t51.2885-15/e35/59723301_742850496111314_5197326153391766227_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent-dus1-1.cdninstagram.com^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}
    • The User ID (found using this tool) of @Instagram is “25025320”, which is included in the third listed URL format.
  • Instagram hashtags post counter used to count deleted and private posts as well. Got patched at some point, probably due to "bug bounty" at Wikipedia program.

Embeds on other services

Instagram posts require a bit of trickery to get them to embed properly on services such as Discord. There is a service known as "InstaFix" or "ddinstagram" for this purpose, although it stops working occasionally due to upstream Instagram changes. A list of alternate services and forks of the service can be found in this GitHub issue: https://github.com/Wikidepia/InstaFix/issues/181^{[IA•Wcite•.today]}.