Guide
Instagram saved collection downloader
You saved four hundred reels into a collection and now you want them as files. There is no export button, no bulk download, and the one tool that could normally handle this cannot see the page. Here is why, and how ArcDLP works around it.
Why this is harder than it sounds
yt-dlp handles individual
Instagram posts and reels perfectly well. Give it
instagram.com/reel/ABC123/ and you get a file. It has no extractor for saved
collections, and that is not an oversight.
A saved collection lives at a URL like
instagram.com/yourname/saved/collection-name/17841/. That page is private to
you, rendered entirely client side by JavaScript, and paginated by infinite scroll. There
is no public API endpoint that returns the list, and no static HTML containing the post
URLs. A command line tool that fetches the page gets back an empty shell.
So the collection is a list problem, not a download problem. Once you have the individual post URLs, yt-dlp does the rest without complaint.
Step by step
- Sign in. Settings → Instagram Account → Sign in. Instagram's own login page opens in a separate window. Complete it including two factor if you have it on, and the window closes itself once you land on your feed.
-
Copy the collection URL. Open the collection in a browser and copy the
address bar. It will contain
/saved/in the path. The generic/saved/all-posts/view works too. - Paste and click Fetch. ArcDLP recognises the URL shape as a collection and switches into scraping mode. The log panel reports the running count as posts come in, so you can watch it work.
- Select what you want. Results appear in a checklist with thumbnails and captions. Everything starts ticked. Use Deselect all if you only want a handful.
- Pick a format and queue it. One format applies to the whole batch, so choose best quality, a specific resolution, or an audio-only format like MP3. Then Add Selected to Queue.
If you get a login error. A message about Instagram sign-in being required means the session expired rather than that something is broken. Instagram sessions do not last forever. Sign out and sign in again under Settings → Instagram Account and re-run the fetch.
What it cannot do
Being straight about this, because a scraper working against a hostile, frequently changing page is never going to be flawless.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Collection contains photos | Photos are skipped. Videos and reels only. |
| Very large collection | Instagram rate limits aggressive scrolling. You may get a partial list. Wait and run it again to pick up the rest. |
| Not signed in | The page redirects to login and the fetch stops with a clear error. |
| Someone else's collection | Not possible. Saved collections are private to the account that made them. |
| Instagram changes its markup | Scraping is inherently brittle. If it stops finding posts, open an issue. |
| An individual post fails | The queue keeps going and marks that one failed. Retry it on its own afterwards. |
Single reels and posts
You do not need any of the above for one video. Paste a reel or post URL directly and ArcDLP treats it like any other site, going straight to yt-dlp. Signing in still helps, since it lets you reach content from private accounts you follow, but public reels work without it.
Where your credentials go
Instagram's real login page opens in an isolated browser session. Your password goes to
Instagram and ArcDLP never sees it. What the app keeps is the resulting session cookies,
written to a local file only when a download needs them, and only for
instagram.com and its related domains.
Signing out clears the session and deletes the cookie file. Settings → Reset app wipes all app data including both the YouTube and Instagram sessions. Nothing is transmitted anywhere else, and the whole cookie handling path is about 250 lines you can read yourself.
A word on what you save
Your saved collection is your own bookmark list, but the videos in it were mostly made by other people who hold the copyright. Keeping a personal offline copy of things you have saved is one thing. Republishing them, or reuploading them to another platform, is something else and generally is not yours to do. It may also breach Instagram's terms of service. ArcDLP is a tool, and what you point it at is your call.
FAQ
Can yt-dlp download an Instagram saved collection?
Does it download photos from a saved collection?
Is my Instagram password safe?
Why did it only find some of the posts in my collection?
Can I download just the audio from reels?
Download ArcDLP
Free and MIT licensed. Instagram sign-in, collection scraping and the download queue are all built in.