Question :

I came across some group photos on Instagram that I am on but that I did not take and/or post myself. I would really like to save them to my Photos.app but I can’t figure out a way to do that…

How do I do that ?

Answer :

Yes, this is possible, but… DO NOT use any app on your iPhone, iPad or Mac that needs your Instagram login credentials to do that !! as by doing that, you are granting third party access to your Instagram and you are thereby making your Instagram account extreme vulnerable to hacking, fraud and identity swapping !!

Instagram has made it impossible to save pictures from within the Instagram.app (either on iPhone, iPad or Mac) so the only ‘good’ way to do this is via the website. To do so, do this :

• on your Mac, open the Photos.app
• then, open Safari and in the top menu bar goto Safari > Settings > Advanced
• in the “Advanced” window, make sure that there is a checkmark at “Show Develop menu in menu bar”
• now, close the Settings and goto http://www.instagram.com
• login using your account name and password
• scroll through the pictures and select one that you want to download / save to Photos.app
• now, in the top menu bar goto Develop > Show Page Source
• the underwater screen will now appear in the bottom half of the browser window
• inside the underwater screen, in the menu on the left, click on the folder named “Images”
• now, in the main past of the underwater screen you will see just the pictures of your Instagram page
• scroll through these pictures and when you find a picture that you want to download drag&drop it to Photos.app’s main screen and it will be imported to your Photos.app (note that you could also drag&drop the image to your Desktop or any folder in the Finder to save the picture to your Mac)
• repeat this drag&drop action for every picture you want to download
• when done, close Safari
• now, goto the Photos.app and in the menu list on the left, click on “Imports”
• then, on the main part of the Photos window, all recently imported pictures will appear
• scroll down to the very bottom and you will see the pictures you have imported from Instagram
• from here on, you can use the downloaded Instagram pictures however you like…

…that’s it !

enjoy 😉