One link, whatever the post holds
A post on Instagram can be a single photo, a single video, a reel or an album that mixes up to twenty of both. You do not need to know which kind you are looking at before you paste it. The link tells IGDL which post to read, and the result shows whatever that post actually contains.
That matters more than it sounds. Plenty of tools split themselves into a photo page, a video page and a reels page, and a link pasted into the wrong one simply fails. Here every public post address goes into the same box, including the older /tv/ addresses from the IGTV days.
What comes back for each kind of post
- A single photo gives one Download JPG button and the full size picture.
- A video or reel gives a playable preview and one Download button for the MP4, sound included.
- An album gives one button per slide, pictures as JPG and clips as MP4, numbered in the order they appear in the app.
Nothing is merged, zipped or reordered on the way. If the creator put a clip third and a photo seventh, that is exactly where they sit in the result, each with a label saying which slide it is and what it is.
Which address to copy
The link Instagram gives you from Copy link is the right one. It looks like instagram.com/p/ followed by a short code, or /reel/ for a reel, and any tracking text after a question mark can stay; it is ignored. A link to a profile page is not a post, so it will not work, and neither will a link to a story.
A faster way on a computer
If the post is open in a desktop browser, you can skip the copying. Replace instagram.com in the address bar with the address of this site and press Enter, keeping the rest of the link as it is, and you land here with the post already loading.
The files you end up with
Pictures arrive as the largest JPEG Instagram stores for them, and clips as the MP4 it plays, with a 1080p option where Instagram has one, copied rather than re-encoded. Each file is named after the first line of the caption, with a number for each slide of an album, so a set saved together also sorts together in your downloads.
The caption, the posting date, the likes and the comment count are shown with the result so you can confirm you have the right post before saving anything. They are there to read, not written into the files, and a count the creator has hidden is simply left out.
Posts that cannot be downloaded
Only public posts work. A post from a private account, a story, a highlight, a live broadcast or a profile picture needs a signed in session, and IGDL never signs in to Instagram, so none of them can be read at all. A deleted post, or one that is blocked in your country, fails for the same reason.
The sound of a reel or video can be saved on its own too: Download MP3 converts its audio track on your device. Nothing else is converted; pictures and videos are handed over as Instagram stores them.
Saving posts fairly
A downloaded post still belongs to the person who made it. Keeping one to look at offline, to use as a reference or to show a friend is ordinary personal use. Reposting it, or putting it in something you publish, is a different matter: credit the creator and link the original post, or ask them first.
Have a post link ready? Paste it at the top of this page, or go back to the Instagram reels download page.