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SocialInstagram
Updated Sep 28, 2026
Instagram holds your posts, stories, saved collections, direct messages, and a long record of every account you have interacted with. Every export also includes a file called advertisers_using_your_activity_or_information.json, which on most accounts names hundreds of companies. That file is the reason to bother. The media is the reason the download is enormous.
What you'll get
PostsStoriesCommentsDirect MessagesSaved PostsAd Interests
Before you start
- Use the desktop site, instagram.com. The app has no download option, and the setting has been moved between the Settings menu and Accounts Center more than once, which is where most people get stuck.
- Open the menu, then Settings and privacy.
- Find your account information. Depending on when Meta last moved things, this is either Your account information or inside Accounts Center. Both routes lead to the same Download your information button.
- Decide about messages before you request. The direct message export is the part that turns a quick download into a two day wait.
How to download
- Click Download your information and choose the format. JSON is the raw data. HTML gives you your posts and profile laid out as a mini website.
- Request the download. Instagram will ask for your password, and will ask again if it thinks the request looks unusual.
- Wait. Typically a day, sometimes a few. The email that arrives has a download link in it, and there is also a notification waiting for you on the site.
- Download the ZIP and extract it. It is a directory of JSON files, not one document.
Pro tip
Posts and Stories is one box, messages is another, and people who tick only the first one spend the next three years wondering where their DMs went. The download also comes in a JSON flavour and an HTML flavour, and the HTML one is a browsable copy of your own profile, which is nicer to look at than a directory of files.
After the download
- Open advertisers_using_your_activity_or_information.json first. It is the single most useful thing in the whole archive: a list of every advertiser and app that has been sent information about you, through Meta, with timestamps.
- search_history.json is quietly the second best file. It logs every account and hashtag you have ever searched for, which is a more honest record of your interests than anything else you have.
- Posts and stories arrive in a posts folder, with the stories mixed in rather than kept separate. If you wanted only one of them you cannot ask for just that.
- Messages arrive as one nested folder per conversation, with the attachments in a media subfolder. Same problem as Facebook, same answer: a third-party viewer saves the evening.
- Downloading does not clear anything. Deleting your Instagram activity is a separate job in the same menu.