Download Images off of Instagram

People often see some picture -- be it a meme, selfie, or picture of a dog -- on Instagram that they wish they could have on their phone or computer. This page is here to tell you how to do just that!

Step 1

Go to Instagram.com ON YOUR COMPUTER. This is something people are often surprised about. Yes, Instagram does have a browser based version of the platform. In fact, it was released in 2012, before many people used the platform and only two years after the app was launched.

Step 2

Once you are on the website, find the picture you wish to download. Once you are on the page, you should see something like this:

Step 3

Press ctrl-shift-I (cmd-optn-I on Apple) in Google Chrome to open the Developer mode. Don't have Chrome? Get it. It's probably better than whatever browser you're using. You will see something like this at the right side of your screen:

Step 4

Click into the HTML section in the Developer box and press Ctrl-F (cmd-F) to open the search box. Type "img" into the search box and press enter. Press the down arrow on the search box until you have reached result 3 of 3. You should see the phrase "No automatic alt text available." Double click on the src="...." highlighted in the image below so that you can see it highlighted in the same way on your own screen (This is the last URL in the list). Copy the URL.

Step 4

Open a new tab. Paste the URL you copied into the address bar and press enter. You should see a page similar to the image below. Right click on the image and select "Save image as..." and download the image to your computer.

You can now send the image to any other device using e-mail, Google Drive, some other service, or a flash drive.

Something people may be thinking is "Why don't I just right click on the image in the Instagram page itself and click 'Save Image As...'?" Here is the reason you can't:

As you can see, there is no "Save image as..." button available.

Something else you may think is "Why didn't I just use the Developer Mode's select button to grab it and use that URL?" The reason is because selecting the image brings up only a div element with a class that links to the URL I showed you, but no actual URL so this doesn't work.

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