How to Save a Picture from Instagram

We think it's safe to say that everybody knows how fun and entertaining it is to be sharing visual content on Instagram, and discovering new visual content, either from our audience, or our friends and family. However, just like other social media platforms out there, Instagram is fast moving, which means that it can be really helpful to know how to download or save an image or a post. Maybe you want to learn how to save your own Instagram photos, either to keep them to look back on, or to share them on another social media network. 

Or, perhaps you are hoping to download content that other people have posted. You might want to be able to save your old photos, and then change your username on Instagram, and start completely fresh. Maybe you're just tired of the Instagram app, and you want to delete it completely. Whatever reason you have for wanting to save a picture from Instagram, let's take a look at a practical, step-by-step guide that can help you learn how to save a picture from Instagram.

How to Save a Picture to Your Phone

Instagram makes it really easy for you to save images that you've edited, filtered, and captured to your photo library on your phone. Once you've opened the Instagram app, go over to your profile by selecting the icon that is in the shape of a person. You will see this at the bottom of your screen. Once you've found your profile page, select the horizontal lines menu that you'll see at the top of your screen to the right. Now, you can go into settings, and select ‘account’. Select ‘original photos’, for iOS, and if you are using an Android device, you will see ‘original posts’.

Now, you are going to be given the option to automatically save your Instagram images. You can select the toggle, so that you can save original posts or photos. Now that this option has been turned on, every image that you upload to Instagram is going to be saved automatically to your photo library on your phone. This is a super convenient way to do this, without having to do anything every time you post an image. 

How to Save Someone Else’s Picture from Instagram

It's really easy to save an Instagram video or a picture posted by anybody on Instagram, as long as the profile is public, so that you can use it at a later date. You also need to know that when you save a post from somebody, they are not going to be able to tell that you have saved the image. To save somebody else's picture, selected the bookmark icon, that you will see below the image. This is going to add the image to your saved folder on Instagram.

If you want to be able to save a post to a specific collection within your saved private images, select and hold down the bookmark icon. This is going to bring up all of the collections on Instagram that you have already created. You can either save the image to an existing collection, or you can create a new collection, by selecting the ‘+’ icon.

If you want to be able to view the image that you've saved, go to your profile and then select the saved option that will come up on the pop-up menu. This is going to show you all of the saved content that you have put away for later. Remember, only you can see what you have saved, as well as the collections that you have created.

How to Save a Picture Using Desktop

Because of completely understandable copyright issues, Instagram can't let you download photos from other users, either on your smartphone, or onto your desktop. However, there is a work around to this issue, so that you can download images onto your desktop browser, just make sure that you don't use this for malicious purposes.

Open Instagram in a new tab in your web browser and find the image that you want to be able to download. Right click on the image with your mouse and you'll see a menu come up. Select ‘view page source’. This is going to let you see the source code for the page, and it will come up in a separate browser tab. Go through the code until you find the .jpg link. Copy the text that appears between the two quotation marks, and paste this into another browser. Once the image is loaded, you can right click to save it to your computer.

Final Thoughts

Now you know everything there is to know about being able to save a picture from Instagram, so that you can either save your own images to look at later, or you can save someone else's images in your collections on Instagram. This is a great way to make sure that you don't miss out on content that you want to be able to preserve, and it's also a great way to make sure you don't miss out on your favorite influencers’ posts, even if you take a brief break from Instagram. Lastly, you can download images from Instagram, you just have to make sure that you aren't using these images for commercial purposes, and only personal use.