Free Instagram bulk downloader for images and videos

Instagram is one of the top social media sites where you can view images and videos. In my humble experience, I’ve noticed that accounts get removed or deleted fairly easily on Instagram, either by the owner or by Instagram. I’ll say to myself, “I’ll download it when it reaches X number of posts”. But when I come back to do it, it’s all gone! I didn’t save anything, and now there’s no way to get anything. And this has happened not once, not twice. Also, owners can remove some of their posts too. A post you bookmarked is suddenly missing. If only you had already downloaded it. If you are looking for a way to bulk download Instagram images and videos, so that you can avoid the issues I’ve just described above, this tutorial is for you. A tool that does the job of downloading from Instagram pretty well is WFDownloader App. Here are a few reasons to consider using WFDownloader App as your Instagram downloader.

1. It supports bulk downloading from different types of Instagram pages such as profiles, reels, posts, tagged, stories, bookmarks, etc.
2. It’s easy to use. Most times, you only need to drop the link and search.
3. You can queue multiple Instagram accounts you want downloaded if you have a list of those.
4. It can also download media from private Instagram accounts if you are a follower.
5. For Instagram accounts that post regularly, it allows updating them by downloading only new posts with just a click!
6. It also allows backing up of Instagram accounts in a portable JSON format.
7. It’s free. No trial or adware bundled with the software.
8. It’s cross-platform. You can use it on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
9. The tool not only works on Instagram, but also other similar sites such as Pinterest, X/Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Mastodon, etc.

A quick demonstration of how to use the software to download is shown below. Notice, you can just drag and drop the link and then search.

If you are interested, you can get WFDownloader App by clicking the download button below. You’ll need it for this tutorial. This tutorial covers bulk downloading, updating, and queueing.

Get WFDownloader App

How to bulk download from Instagram

No matter the Instagram page you are downloading from, the procedure is the same. You copy and paste the Instagram link corresponding to the page, search, and then download the found media. This tutorial has been elongated to cover as much detail as possible. Follow the steps below.

1. Copy the link to the Instagram page containing the images and videos you want to download. The following Instagram pages are supported: profile page, reels page, IG post page, tagged page, highlight/stories page, and bookmarks page.

2. Open WFDownloader App and click the big blue “Add” button. Notice the link has already been entered for you. If not, you can paste it in yourself.

3. Enter the save folder. If you need to change the Instagram configuration, click the “Config” button. You can see my config in the second image.

4. After the above, click “Confirm” and the link search should start.

If the search doesn’t start and you instead get an error mentioning that the page is private or that login is required, you will need to import cookies from Instagram into WFDownloader App. See how to import cookies into WFDownloader App. Then come back and continue with this tutorial.

5. After the link search is completed, click “Confirm” and a new batch is created for you.

6. Click the “Start” button to begin downloading the Instagram batch and allow it to complete.

7. You can open the folder by right-clicking the batch or any of the download items in the table.

8. That’s all.

As said before, it’s the same procedure whatever the page. For example, if you want to download from an Instagram post, just drag and drop the link of that page and it will get the media for you.

How to download from a private Instagram account

WFDownloader App can also help you download from a private Instagram account you follow. To be able to do that, you’ll need to import cookies from Instagram into WFDownloader App. After that, follow the previous steps above and it should work the next time.

How to back up (export) Instagram accounts

Instagram allows you to back up your account only. If you need to back up other accounts you don’t own, WFDownloader App can help you with that. It can backup the posts of any Instagram account in a portable json format. The backup will contain info such as each post’s creation date, text, like-count, etc. The steps are similar to the one above.

1. Copy the link to the Instagram account or page you want to back up.

2. Open WFDownloader App and click the big blue “Add” button. Also, enter the save folder in addition to the link.

3. Click the “Config” button and for “Fetch_mode”, select “Fetch posts to export later” and click “Accept”.

4. Now click the “Confirm” button and the link search should begin. Notice that this time it’s the Instagram post URLs that are collected instead of the media.

5. After the link search has been completed, click “Confirm” and an Instagram batch will be created for you.

6. Click “Start” and links should be downloaded as json files.

7. Alternatively to step 6 above, if you want just one large json file containing all the posts, follow the steps below.

a. Right-click the batch and click “Export”.

b. Select the “json” option.

c. Also, choose the file name and location via the browse button.

d. Click “Export”. That’s it.

A sample of what the exported json file contains is shown below.

For Instagram accounts that post regularly, you may find yourself in a situation where you want to download only the new items that have been posted since the last time you downloaded with WFDownloader App. You specifically want to avoid downloading everything again as that will only waste time. Simply click the “Update” button for that Instagram batch. It will continue from where you stopped the last time and only download the new items. See the example image below.

How to queue multiple Instagram download jobs at once

If you have multiple Instagram accounts you want to download at once, it’s possible to queue them up for download using WFDownloader App. You will have to use the batch link search feature for this.

WARNING: Instagram is known to be very strict towards bulk downloaders. There is a risk you could get banned for doing this. You should only do this for very small accounts, include enough timing/crawl delays, and make sure you do not have cookies imported (or clear them if you have already imported cookies before).

Now that we’re clear about the risk involved, follow the steps below.

1. Copy the list of Instagram pages or accounts you want to download from.

2. Open WFDownloader App and go to Task > Batch link search. Notice the links have already been pasted in the text area for you.

3. Provide the save folder and make any appropriate settings you want via the “Site Config” and “More options” buttons. Make sure you also set appropriate delays.

4. Click “Confirm” and it will start downloading the Instagram pages. Each page will be opened with the images and videos downloaded accordingly.

5. All that’s left is to wait for the process to finish. If some failed, it means Instagram truncated the process either because you were doing too many or because you didn’t set appropriate delays.

6. That’s all.

Important tips to adhere to while downloading from Instagram

While this tutorial started on an optimistic note and made everything look rosy, the truth is that Instagram is a very restrictive website to download from. Depending on the volume of work, some of you may encounter issues while downloading from the site with WFDownloader App. There is very little WFDownloader App can do if you get yourself flagged (i.e. marked) by Instagram. If you are careless enough to allow that to happen, you won’t find downloading from Instagram easy/fun anymore. Even other software won’t be able to help you. Unknowingly, some of you might have already gotten yourself flagged by Instagram as a bot while previously using another Instagram downloader software. In that case, even WFDownloader App won’t be able to help you. Here are some tips to follow when downloading from Instagram.

1. Download in moderation. If you download too many accounts quickly, you will get blocked by Instagram.
2. Set realistic expectations. Extremely large accounts are no longer fully downloadable from Instagram . For example, do not expect to download an account with over 20,000 posts. It’s not the software being bad, it’s Instagram setting the restrictions.
3. Always download/update Instagram public accounts without importing cookies. Only do so (ie. import cookies), when you have hit the Instagram daily limit. When you hit the daily limit, the app will stop working and prompt you to import cookies because Instagram is directing you to a login page.
4. If you can, use a spare/throwaway account when downloading from Instagram. That way, if Instagram ever takes action on you, you will only be losing the spare account and not your precious account. Note that creating a new account and instantly trying to bulk download doesn’t work because Instagram has already identified this pattern.
5. Also, some VPNs have automatically been flagged by Instagram. This means that downloading from Instagram via such VPNs will be a hassle, even if it’s just a single account you want to download.
6. One final tip is to ask yourself, would Instagram be able to easily distinguish me from a normal Instagram user with the way I am downloading? If your answer is an easy yes, then you are in trouble with Instagram.

Notice that I was being vague and not giving exact numbers because the situation varies from user to user, and Instagram could even make things more restrictive in the future, making those numbers moot. If you are a one-time downloader, or a casual downloader (without a past record), you probably have nothing to worry about. However, if you will want to be downloading regularly, you need to take the above tips seriously.

Conclusion

We have seen a robust way to bulk download Instagram images and videos using WFDownloader App. The software works on public and private instagram accounts and even allows updating your downloads whenever you want to get only new items. Moreover, the tool also supports downloading from similar sites such as X/Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Flickr, etc using the same procedure explained in this tutorial.

Please note that WFDownloader App is not an official Instagram downloader app so it can stop working at any time (usually whenever the website changes things). Report your issue to support to get it fixed.

Finally, did you try the tutorial? Did it work for you or not? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Originally published at https://www.wfdownloader.xyz on August 25, 2024.