Insights

How to save a copy of your own Instagram video

This post is from 2016, when the only reliable way to get your own clip back off Instagram was a screen recording. That is no longer true. If you want the file you posted, here are the four routes, best quality first.

1. Keep the original before you post it

Nothing you download afterwards will match the file you uploaded. Instagram re-encodes everything. So the real answer is a habit rather than a trick: export from your editing app to your camera roll first, post second, and keep that export.

If you cut on a phone, switch the export setting to the highest quality your app offers and turn off any automatic upload that compresses again. It costs storage and saves you from ever needing the rest of this list.

2. Use Instagram's own download

Under Settings, in the account section, you can request a copy of everything you have posted. You get a link by email and a zip file with your photos and videos. It is the only route that is unambiguously allowed for your own material, and it comes without a watermark.

The catch is timing. The request can take anything from a few minutes to a day, so it is no help when you need a clip in the next ten minutes.

3. Save your own Reel from the app

For Reels you made yourself there is a save option in the menu on the clip. That is the fastest route and good enough for reposting to Stories. It is not good enough as a master file: the quality is what Instagram served, not what you uploaded, and depending on the route it can carry a watermark that other platforms then push down.

4. Screen recording, and why it is the last resort

It works, it takes thirty seconds, and it produces the worst file of the four. You get the interface, a lower frame rate and whatever your screen was doing at the time. Use it to check something, not to publish something.

A word on other people's videos

Everything above is about your own material. Downloading someone else's clip and posting it as your own is a copyright problem, and on top of that it is a bad idea for reach: platforms are good at recognising re-uploaded files. If you want to build on someone else's idea, take the structure and make your own version. That works, and it is yours.

The wider point

Most people who ask this question are asking it because they made a clip once and want to use it in more than one place. That is the right instinct. Plan it the other way round: shoot once, export clean, then post to each platform from that file rather than from the platform. Your reach will thank you, and you will never need a screen recording again.