Instagram has added all sorts of compatibility in recent years, from short videos to Stories; and more recently, to the new Instagram TV (IGTV) option for watching your favorite creators. This makes Instagram not just a destination for uploading photos, but also unique and creative videos. In some ways, it almost seems like Facebook and Instagram are making it even harder to get away from the site, and if you’re headed offline, there’s a good chance you’ll want to take a few of the videos with you to watch without WiFi. Fortunately, the process of video downloading is quite simple.
One of the obvious reasons why you may want to download videos is to make sure you save copies of your most favorite videos. Luckily for you, there are multiple ways to do this and we have compiled a list of the best methods for you.
Downloading Your Own Instagram Videos
Stories
Often times you may find yourself taking videos to upload to your Instagram story directly through the app. Luckily, Instagram makes it very easy to download videos taken through the app. Simply follow these steps:
- Take a video to post to your story on Instagram.
- Locate the download symbol at the top of the screen and press it.
That’s all there is to downloading stories that you shot within the Instagram app!
How to Download Instagram Videos Using Online Tool
Have a hard time choosing which online tool works best? Worry no more! Third-party tools make downloading videos from Instagram easy. Whether it’s your own video or someone else’s, you can quickly download Instagram videos to your device.
We’ll start with one of our favorites, Circleboom. This website is also available as an app and offers a lot of functionality. Here’s what to do:
- Open Circleboom on a web browser and create an account.
- When you open Circleboom, you’ll see a menu to the left. Click on the video download icon.
- Click Video Downloader.
- Paste the URL to the Instagram video you want to download in the search box.
- Click on Grab that video file. Then, click the Right-click here button to save the video.
- A new window will open and you can download the video to your device.
That’s all you need to do to download any video from Instagram.
TinyWow also makes downloading Twitter videos on a desktop or pc very easy. No installation is required. Without further ado, here’s a quick guide.
- Log in to your Instagram account.
- Go to your friend’s stories and click the story that you’d like to download.
- You’ll see a “See Post” and click it.
- You will be directed to the post, click the “three-horizontal dot,” and select “copy link.”
- Open a new tab on your browser and go to “TinyWow.com.”
- Hover your mouse to “Video” and select “Instagram Download.”
- Paste the link in the “URL” box and click “Find Video.”
- Click “Download,” which will be saved automatically on your computer.
TinyWow comes with a lot of features. It’s fast, free, and accessible to anyone without ads or even logins. Bookmarking TinyWow will benefit us in our daily use as we don’t know when new videos will catch our interest.
Using IFTTT to download Instagram Posts
The best method for automatically downloading videos you post to Instagram by using IFTTT. It uses an IFTTT recipe to automatically download any video you post onto your cloud storage. This is great if you’re on a mission to collect video series or just want to save videos for later use.
You will need an IFTTT account, a Dropbox account and (obviously) an Instagram account for this to work. Log into IFTTT and use this recipe, or make your own (it is much, much easier to use the provided recipe.) Then follow these steps:
- Hit the large connect button on the page provided in the link above.
- Authorize IFTTT to connect to your Instagram account by clicking “Allow.”
- You will be automatically redirected to the page to link your Dropbox to IFTTT. Sign in and hit “Allow.”
Now, any time you upload a video on Instagram, IFTTT will automatically download it to Dropbox for you to access at any time. How cool is that?
Downloading Other People’s Videos: Choose Your Method
There are four main ways to download Instagram videos. You can use an app or your browser and a couple of downloader websites. You can also download manually if you prefer or use IFTTT to automate it. Let’s take a look at each.
Downloading Instagram videos is not supported by Instagram themselves. They would obviously prefer having you spend as much time as possible on the social network. As long as you do not share the content you download and do not violate any copyright, you will be fine.
Download Instagram Videos Using an App
Android
The Instant Story & Video Download is a useful app that allows you to download whatever Instagram video you want. Here’s what you need to do:
- Download the app from Google Play and install it.
- Then, open it and paste the video URL into the app where it says ‘Paste Link’.
- Tap the “Downloads” at the bottom, then the Videos tab where you can see your downloaded video.
iPhone
A good option for a free third party app on iOS to download videos from Instagram is Instdown . It is simple and easy to use, just follow these steps:
- Download the Instdown app from the app store
- Open the video you would like to download on Instagram. Tap the three dots in the top right and select the “Copy Link” option.
- Paste the link into Instdown and hit the download button to the right. Give the app permission to access your photos, and the video should be saved.
Download Instagram Videos On Your Mac or PC Browser
There are a few options for websites that allow fast downloading of Instagram videos through your browser. One of the most popular is called W3Toys. To make this work, follow these steps:
- Copy the URL of the video you want to download.
- Navigate to the W3Toys website and paste the URL into the box. Hit “Download.”
- You should see a message confirming the success. Hit the green “download” button and the site will download the video onto your device.
Unfortunately, W3Toys can be slow at peak times. A good alternative is a site called Save Deo. We do have a fair warning if you choose SaveDeo, though. It does have a tendency to list the most popular video downloads and many of them are definitely not safe for work or for younger eyes! Another decent download site that works like the two previously mentioned is Instadown.
Wrapping Up
Each of these methods is a viable way to download videos from Instagram. If you’re not the most tech savvy, or don’t regularly download videos, using the IFTTT method not be worth your while. In that case, the manual method or websites that we listed above might be more to your tastes.
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Do you regularly download from Instagram? Have any other ways of downloading that aren’t listed here? Use any other Android or iOS app not mentioned? Tell us about it below.
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