Downloads all posts, photos as well as videos and reels, of one or more Instagram accounts and
builds a self-contained static site in site/, one folder per account. Watch the creators you
chose distraction-free, without ads, autoplay or an algorithmic feed. Keep a usable archive of
your own work, which Meta's data export does not easily provide.
Instagram rejects scripted API clients (Instaloader, gallery-dl, yt-dlp) while a real browser session works fine. The downloader therefore drives a logged-in Chromium-based browser over the DevTools protocol: it scrolls the profile grid, harvests the post data Instagram sends to the page, and downloads the files from Instagram's CDN. Collaboration posts owned by another account are included. Re-runs only fetch new posts.
uvx instagram-offline USERNAME
python -m http.server -d siteuvx instagram-offline --all updates every account already archived in site/.
From a checkout, you can use uv run insta to execute the setup the same way.
Log in to Instagram in the browser window on the first run.
Any Chromium-based browser works: Chromium, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi or Opera are found
automatically on Linux, macOS and Windows; --browser EXECUTABLE selects one explicitly, and
a Chromium-based browser in the conventional $BROWSER variable is preferred over the search.
Without any, Playwright's own Chromium is downloaded on first use.
Firefox and Safari are not supported, as they lack the DevTools protocol the tool relies on.
Every account page has topic filters and an "About" box on the overview: by default the topics
are the hashtags the account uses most, and the About text is the account's own bio, captured
with its name, category, follower count and links. An optional site/USERNAME/profile.json with
an about text and a list of topics (name plus caption keywords) replaces either. Keywords
match at the start of a word; a trailing space makes a keyword match whole words only.
site/ is ignored by this repository. To track changes of the archive, keep it as a separate,
private Git repository that ignores the media files and the run markers, and versions only the
metadata, index and HTML pages:
cd site
git init
printf '*.jpg\n*.mp4\n*.part\n.complete\n' > .gitignore
git add .
git commit -m "Add archive"After each download run, commit the changes in site/.
This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Instagram or Meta Platforms, Inc. in any way. This software is provided for research and educational purposes only. Downloading content from Instagram in an automated way, in particular with a logged-in account, may violate Instagram's Terms of Use and Meta's platform policies and may result in restrictions or termination of the account used. All downloaded content remains the intellectual property of its respective creators and rights holders. Whether making a copy for private use is permitted depends on the copyright law of your jurisdiction; distributing, publishing or otherwise making the downloaded content or the generated website available to the public without the rights holders' permission constitutes copyright infringement and may violate personality, image and data-protection rights.
You are solely responsible for ensuring that your use of this software complies with all applicable laws, regulations and contractual terms. The authors and contributors accept no liability for any claims, damages or other liability arising from the use of this software or the content obtained with it. Nothing in this document constitutes legal advice.