IGExport: stories and highlights, packed as a ZIP

The word export usually suggests rows and columns: a list of usernames you can sort, filter and compare in a spreadsheet. That is a reasonable expectation, and it is worth correcting before you spend any time here. IGExport does not read follower counts, does not collect following lists and does not produce CSV, XLSX or JSON files of anyone's connections. There is no hidden setting that turns it on. If a list of accounts is what you need, this is the wrong page, and saying so up front saves you a wasted search.

What IGExport does export is the visual side of a public profile, the part that is hardest to keep. Stories vanish after a day, highlights can be edited or removed whenever the owner likes, and a profile picture only shows as a small circle in the app. Each of those comes back as a normal file you can keep: MP4 with audio for any clip, whether it came from the story tray or a highlight, JPG for stills, and one image for the avatar. If you need the lot in one go, IGExport zips it up for you.

The whole thing runs without an Instagram login. You type a username, IGExport fetches what the account shows publicly, and you decide what to keep. No sign-in means the export carries no trace of your own profile, and nobody on the other end is alerted. On the question of whether a creator is ever told that a story was saved, this guide to what creators are told lays out exactly what an owner gets to see.

A full export of a busy account usually comes down to three actions: one Save all for the current stories, one Save all for each highlight album you care about, and one tap on the profile picture. Each highlight is exported on its own, so an account with several albums gives you several archives, which keeps a travel album from getting mixed up with a product album. Anyone mainly after highlights will find album-by-album saving explained at length on the highlights downloader page.

Every file in an IGExport archive is the same one Instagram serves to the app. Whatever the creator layered on in the editor, from stickers and captions to drawings, is baked into that file, so your copy matches what followers saw. Instagram publishes photo stories with music as short clips, so expect those as MP4, not JPG. Interactive pieces such as poll results, question replies and link stickers live outside the file and are not carried over.

Your browser builds the ZIP itself, with no server in the middle, so no copy of the export is kept anywhere. Inside, files carry numbers matching their on-screen order, and highlight archives are named after their album, so repeat exports of one account stay easy to sort. Android drops the ZIP into Downloads; iPhone Safari saves it to the Files app, where tapping it expands a folder whose contents can go into Photos. The avatar can also be saved on its own through the profile picture downloader.

Beyond follower and following lists, a few other things stay out of reach. Private profiles are off the table: IGExport sees only what a visitor without a login would see, and nothing gets around that. Close-friends stories are likewise limited to the people the owner picked. Once a story passes the one-day mark it leaves public view, unless it was pinned to a highlight, so an expired item is worth hunting for in the highlight row.

IGExport is also not a downloader for feed posts or reels shared by link. Give it a username and it exports exactly what that profile page carries: live stories, highlight albums and the avatar. Keeping the scope that narrow is deliberate, because it means the result page always shows the same three things in the same order, and an export of one account looks like an export of any other.