Instarchive

Instarchive is a command-line utility for collecting and organizing data from specific Instagram profiles using the Instaloader Python module.

Installation

Instarchive is available on PyPI.

pip3 install instarchive

Features

• Downloads items only from a given list of users to track (instead of enumerating all followees or downloading the whole feed).

• Sorts items from :stories and :feeds into directories based on username.

• Responds to username changes and updates the tracking list file automatically.

Usage

Demo assuming a Unix environment:

# Set up the archive. Do re-run this command if you've changed your username.
# The username can also be omitted for using Instarchive anonymously (private
# profiles won't be accessible in those cases).
instarchive init 'my_username'

# The file containing a list of users to track. Only data and metadata
# associated with these users will ever be downloaded.
cat << EOF > ~/instarchive/tracking.txt
target_username

# this is a comment
another_target_username
EOF

# Login to Instagram; your password and authentication code, if necessary, will
# be prompted for. Also, re-run this command if your session has expired, as is
# typically the case when HTTP 401 errors prevent content download.
instarchive login

# Download all accessible data (profile info, profile pic, posts, highlights,
# stories etc.) from all of the users named in the tracking list. Optional;
# intended to be run only once or occasionally since it takes a lot of web
# requests to Instagram. Consider the 'feed' command instead for regular runs.
instarchive everything

# Download data (stories and posts) from the users named in the tracking list,
# only based on what is visible in your feed. Note that this is much faster
# than the 'everything' command. To specify the number of posts to go through in
# the feed, pass the '-p <number of posts>' option; the default is 200.
instarchive feed

By default, the archive is located at the instarchive directory under the home directory of the current OS user. This location can be changed by passing the -d <path to archive directory> option to instarchive.

Run instarchive [optional command name] --help for usage information.

Disclaimer

As with Instaloader itself, Instarchive is independent of and unsupported by Instagram. Use at your own risk, and be wary of ratelimits.