How to download
your Instagram data
Two minutes in the app, one notification — then a four-day window to grab the file. Every screen below, in order, including the Save button and the two default settings that quietly ruin the export.
Every other unfollower app asks for your Instagram password. That is exactly why they have no export step, and why your account can be banned for using them. Follow Crab never touches your account: it reads the export Instagram already owes you, inside your browser. These two minutes are the price of never having to trust us with your login.
- Customize information
- Followers and following — tick nothing else
- All time · JSON
A small file. The email usually arrives within minutes.
- All available information
- Followers, Likes, Story interactions, Ads, Messages, Insights
- All time · JSON
A much bigger file. Expect hours, occasionally up to 48. You don't need to wait on this page.
Open Settings and activity
In the Instagram app: go to your profile, tap the ☰ menu in the top-right, then tap Settings and activity.
Tap Accounts Center
It's the block right at the top. This is where Meta keeps the settings shared by Instagram and Facebook.
Your information and permissions → Export your information
Two taps inside Accounts Center. This is Instagram's own export tool — you're not granting anyone access, you're collecting what is already yours.
Tap Create export
Instagram opens its own export screen here — it may load as a web page inside the app (accountscenter.instagram.com); that's normal, it is still Meta's official flow. Tap the blue Create export button.
Pick your profile, then Export to device
On "Choose a profile", pick the Instagram account you actually want to analyse — the list shows every profile in your Accounts Center. Then choose Export to device, not "Export to external service". Unfollowers only: on the settings screen that follows, tap Customize information and tick just "Followers and following". The full unwrapped: keep the default, All available information.
Format: JSON required
The default is HTML, and Instagram's own subtitle explains the trap: "This format allows you to easily view your data offline on your computer." Pleasant to read, unparseable by any tool — ours or anyone else's. Pick JSON, in Instagram's words "This format allows you to import your data into another site or app" — exactly what you're about to do. Then tap the blue Save button: selecting the radio is not enough, and an unsaved pick silently reverts to HTML.
Date range: All time critical
The default is Last year — and this is the setting that hands you a wrong answer instead of an error. With a short range Instagram quietly truncates your followers list (one real export listed 2 of 175 followers) and returns only a few days of activity. Anything computed from it would be confidently, invisibly wrong. Pick All time — Instagram warns "May take longer to export", which is the honest trade — then tap Save. Leave the screen without saving and your export silently runs on Last year.
Start export — then you have four days
Tap the blue Start export button and you're done in the app. Instagram's warning, verbatim: "When your export is ready, we'll send you a notification. For security reasons, you'll only have four days to download your files." Minutes for the small export, up to 48 hours for the full one — but don't sit on that notification: after four days the file expires and you start over. Save the .zip and upload it whole below: don't unzip it, don't rename it.
Hesitating before you hand a stranger a ZIP of your Instagram life is the correct instinct. It never reaches us. Your browser reads the file, and this page's Content-Security-Policy sets connect-src to 'none', which blocks the page from making any network request at all. That is not a promise not to upload your data. There is nowhere to upload it to: for your data, there is no server.