# instaloader

Tool to download pictures (or videos) and captions from Instagram, from a given set
of profiles, from your feed or from all followees of a given profile.

## Usage

instaloader is written in Python, thus ensure having
[Python](https://www.python.org/) (at least version 3.3) installed.

If you intend to use this tool under Windows, it is highly recommended to first install
[win-unicode-console](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/win_unicode_console).

After having [downloaded instaloader](https://github.com/Thammus/instaloader/releases), unzip it and
invoke bundled `setup.py` (requiring [setuptools](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/setuptools)) to
install it:
```
./setup.py install [--user]
```
(pass `--user` to install it for your user only instead of globally)
instaloader requires [python3-requests](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/requests/), which will be
installed automatically by setup.py, if not already installed.

Now, to download a set of profiles, do
```
instaloader profile [profile ...]
```
where `profile` is the name of a profile you want to download. Instead of only one profile, you may
also specify a list of profiles.

To later update your local copy of that profile, you may run
```
instaloader --fast-update profile [profile ...]
```
When `--fast-update` is given, instaloder terminates when arriving at the first already-downloaded
picture.

Instaloader can also be used to **download private profiles**. To do so, invoke it with
```
instaloader --login=your_username profile [profile ...]
```
When invoked like this, it also **stores the session cookies** in a file in `/tmp`, which will be
reused later when `--login` is given. So you can download private profiles **non-interactively**
when you already have a valid session cookies file.

If you want to **download all followees of a given profile**, call
```
instaloader --login=your_username @profile
```

To **download all the pictures which you have liked**, call
```
instaloader --login=your_username :feed-liked
```

The `--quiet` option makes it also **suitable as a cron job**.

To get a list of other helpful flags, run `instaloader --help`.

## Usage as library

You may also use parts of instaloader as library to do other interesting things.

For example, to get a list of all followers of a profile as well as their follower count, do
```python
import instaloader

# login
session = instaloader.get_logged_in_session(USERNAME)

# get followees
followees = instaloader.get_followees(PROFILE, session)
for f in followees:
    print("%i\t%s\t%s" % (f['follower_count'], f['username'], f['full_name']))
```

Then, you may download all pictures of all followees with
```python
for f in followees:
    try:
        instaloader.download(f['username'], session)
    except instaloader.NonfatalException:
        pass
```

You could also download your last 20 liked pics with
```python
instaloader.download_feed_pics(session, max_count=20, fast_update=True,
                               filter_func=lambda node: not node["likes"]["viewer_has_liked"])
```

Each Instagram profile has its own unique ID which stays unmodified even if a user changes his/her
username. To get said ID, given the profile's name, you may call
```python
instaloader.get_id_by_username(PROFILE_NAME)
```

`get_followees()` also returns unique IDs for all loaded followees. To get the current username of a
profile, given this unique ID
`get_username_by_id()` can be used. For example:
```python
instaloader.get_username_by_id(session, followees[0]['id'])
```