How to Save Instagram Stories (Yours and Others)

Back in 2010, we never imagined that in 2021 we would associate Insta with Stories rather than photos. Today, the Stories feature is the first thing that most users update their news feeds for. Stories are engaging, interesting, and creative content at the same time, providing you with the latest news and behind-the-scenes insights into the lives of the users you follow. But we all know their most significant shortcoming: they don’t “live” for months like profile posts — they disappear after 24 hours.

So sometimes it’s worth saving your own or someone else’s exciting Story to be nostalgic or just to enjoy it at any time (and even after it has disappeared from IG). No matter what your reason for keeping Stories is, it is essential to know (just in case) how you can “extend their life” on your phone or just on Instagram using in-built platform features or an external Story saver Instagram tool. So let’s go through it all in order.

Download your Stories automatically to Archive or/and to Phone gallery

Instagram already has specific buttons that you can activate to automatically download Instagram Story you’ve posted to your phone or Instagram archive.

Here is how you may activate these buttons and upload your Stories automatically to a gallery and/or IG archive:

• go to Settings from your IG profile window clicking on 3 horizontal lines on the right;
• then press Privacy and Story;
• scroll down a bit, and you will see a “Save to camera roll” or “Save story to archive” buttons there;
• activate one or two of them at once.

To find your Story after 24 hours, go to your phone gallery or Archive on Insta (3 horizontal lines then Archive).

Download your active Story

You don’t have to wait for your Story to disappear — you can upload the current Story directly to phone storage.

Here’s how to keep your current Story:

• click on your profile icon on the left of an IG homepage;
• press “More” on your opened Story and then “Save…” > “Save Story”.

Download someone’s Story

External online savers

AloInstagram, StoryDownloader, InstaFollowers, and other web-based downloaders are designed for uploading other users’ Stories directly to a device on a browser without installations.

A Story saver Instagram needs a username insertion whose Stories you are going to upload into your gallery. So, you should open a saver via a browser, then insert a necessary username, press a button, and then pick out a Story for saving.

There are special phone apps such as Story Saver for Androids and InstaStories for iPhones that should be installed into your phone, and then you are free to load Stories in phone memory storage via the apps.

Bonus tip: screenshot or screen recording

If you do not like to use third-party tools, then as a last resort, you can use the phone’s built-in screenshot or screen recording functions (but there are also separate screen-recording applications to choose from). Of course, saving someone else’s Story in this way will not be the best quality, but if you want to use it as a personal gallery archive, then why not?

So, to take a screenshot on Android, hit the power and volume down buttons simultaneously; to do it on an iPhone, hit the side and home buttons at the same time.

To save a video Story, use a screen recording button on Settings (Android) or swipe the screen from bottom to top to find a “circle” button in the opened window (iPhone).