.. meta::
   :description:
      How to download pictures from Instagram. Description of basic
      usage of Instaloader, free tool to download photos from public
      and private profiles, hashtags, stories, feeds, saved media, and
      their metadata, comments and captions.

Download Pictures from Instagram
---------------------------------

.. highlight:: none

.. NOTE that Section "Basic Usage" is duplicated in README.rst.

Basic Usage
^^^^^^^^^^^

To **download all pictures and videos of a profile**, as well as the
**profile picture**, 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 profiles, you may run

::

    instaloader --fast-update profile [profile ...]

If :option:`--fast-update` is given, Instaloader stops when arriving at the
first already-downloaded picture. When updating profiles, Instaloader
automatically **detects profile name changes** and renames the target directory
accordingly.

Instaloader can also be used to **download private profiles**. To do so,
invoke it with

::

    instaloader --login=your_username profile [profile ...]

When logging in, Instaloader **stores the session cookies** in a file in your
temporary directory, which will be reused later the next time :option:`--login`
is given.  So you can download private profiles **non-interactively** when you
already have a valid session cookie file.

.. _what-to-download:

What to Download
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Instaloader supports the following targets:

``profile``
   Public profile, or private profile with :option:`--login`. For each profile
   you download, :option:`--stories` instructs Instaloader to also
   **download the user's stories**.

``"#hashtag"``
   Posts with a certain **hashtag** (the quotes are usually neccessary),

``:stories``
   The currently-visible **stories** of your followees (requires
   :option:`--login`),

``:feed``
   Your **feed** (requires :option:`--login`),

``:saved``
   Posts which are marked as **saved** (requires :option:`--login`),

``@profile``
   All profiles that are followed by ``profile``, i.e. the *followees* of
   ``profile`` (requires :option:`--login`).

Instaloader goes through all media matching the specified targets and
downloads the pictures and videos and their captions. You can specify

- :option:`--comments`, to also **download comments** of each post,

- :option:`--geotags`, to **download geotags** of each post and save them as
  Google Maps link,

- :option:`--metadata-json`, to store further post metadata in a separate JSON
  file.

.. _filename-specification:

Filename Specification
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

For each target, Instaloader creates a directory named after the target,
i.e. ``profile``, ``#hashtag``, ``:feed``, etc. and therein saves the
posts in files named after the post's timestamp.

:option:`--dirname-pattern` allows to configure the directory name of each
target. The default is ``--dirname-pattern={target}``. In the dirname
pattern, the token ``{target}`` is replaced by the target name, and
``{profile}`` is replaced by the owner of the post which is downloaded.

:option:`--filename-pattern` configures the path of the post's files relative
to the target directory. The default is ``--filename-pattern={date}``.
The tokens ``{target}`` and ``{profile}`` are replaced like in the
dirname pattern. Further, the tokens ``{date}``, ``{date_utc}`` and ``{shortcode}`` are
defined. Additionally, in case of not downloading stories, the attributes of
:class:`.Post` can be used, e.g. ``{post.owner_id}`` or ``{post.mediaid}``.

For example, encode the poster's profile name in the filenames with:

::

    instaloader --filename-pattern={date}_{profile} "#hashtag"

The pattern string is formatted with Python's string formatter. This
gives additional flexibilty for pattern specification. For example,
`strftime-style formatting options <https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-behavior>`__
are supported for the post's
timestamp. The default for ``{date}`` is ``{date:%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S}``.

.. _filter-posts:

Filter Posts
^^^^^^^^^^^^

The :option:`--only-if` option allows to specify criterias that posts have to
meet to be downloaded. If not given, all posts are downloaded. It must be a
boolean Python expression where the variables :attr:`.likes`, :attr:`.comments`,
:attr:`.viewer_has_liked`, :attr:`.is_video`, and many more are defined.

A few examples:

To **download the pictures from your feed that you have liked**:

::

    instaloader --login=your_username --only-if=viewer_has_liked :feed

Or you might only want to download **posts that either you liked or were
liked by many others**:

::

    instaloader --login=your_username --only-if="likes>100 or viewer_has_liked" profile

Or you may **skip videos**:

::

    instaloader --only-if="not is_video" target

Or you may filter by hashtags that occur in the Post's caption. For
example, to download posts of kittens that are cute: ::

    instaloader --only-if="'cute' in caption_hashtags" "#kitten"

The given string is evaluated as a
`Python boolean expression <https://docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#boolean-operations>`__,
where all occuring variables are attributes of the :class:`.Post` class.