Sometimes you just need to save your own or other users’ stories from Instagram. Whatever the reason, you know that they will disappear in 24 hours, and if you want to save what’s on there, you should act quickly. You can surely save your stories in Highlights, but you can’t keep all your stories there because that’s simply inconvenient. 

From time to time, you might also want to download other people’s relevant stories, so that you can get back to them later. But unfortunately, there is no such functionality on Instagram that would allow you to save stories in Saved as it does for posts. 

In this article, we’ll cover 8 ways to download your own and other people's stories using various services, applications, browser extensions and the capabilities of Instagram itself. 

How to save or download a story from Instagram: 8 ways

1. Use 4K Stogram 

4K Stogram is a desktop app available for Windows, macOS and Linux. It works very straightforward: you install it on your PC or Mac and simply search for a required profile you want to download a story from. 

To do so, open the app on your device and enter the account username or link to the search field. Then click on the three lines icon at the upper right - these are the Advanced Download option. 

There you should check the marks next to the options you need. In our case, select ‘Download Stories’ and uncheck all others. 

If you need to download photo and video posts, tagged posts, and Highlights along with stories, you can leave all checkmarks as they are. 

Once you’ve found the account in the 4K Stogram’s search results, choose it and press ‘Download’. 

All the stories of this account will start downloading automatically, but you can pause the download process any time and resume it later if you wish. Thus you can view Instagram stories anonymously. 

Here it is! 4K Stogram has downloaded the stories you needed and created a special folder on your PC or Mac where you can find all the content you have saved with the app. To do so, just press on the three dots button and select ‘Show in Finder’. 

Apart from saving Instagram stories, 4K Stogram is also capable of backing up your Instagram account, showing you an Instagram feed without ads, letting you download Insta content of private accounts and your saved posts, and allowing you to browse any user’s Instagram feed without following them. 

2. Download a story when publishing 

Instagram allows for autosaving your own stories to the smartphone gallery when posting, but you need to make sure that the function is enabled.

Open the story editor as you normally would. 

Go to Instagram Settings, then Story. On the Saving section, if you set it on the ‘Save to camera roll’ parameter, all the stories you upload will be automatically downloaded on your device. 

Alternatively, you can make a story but before publishing press the Save button (downward arrow button next to the story filters).

3. Use your phone for screen-recording 

You can record your screen using the built-in function. However, it’s impossible to do on Android; you need to install third-party applications, but on the iPhone and iPad, it is.

How to capture screen on iPhone and iPad

Add a screen recording tool to the Control Center screen of your device. To do this, go to Settings - Control Center - Customize Controls and click on the green plus next to the Screen Record.

1. Starting with the iPhone X, to launch the tool, you need to swipe down from the upper-right edge of the screen, on earlier models - up from the bottom.
2. Click on the grey recording icon, then "Start recording". To stop recording, click again on the recording icon or on the line with the timer at the top of the screen.

If the story is a static image, you can simply take a screenshot. On Android, you need to simultaneously hold down the power button and volume down, and on iPhone, you need to simultaneously hold down the Home button and the side button of the device for iPhones up to X, from iPhone X and later, simultaneously press the power button and volume up.

4. Use Telegram bots

The bots like @insta_save, @SaveZBot or @instasavegrambot will cope with the task - they allow you to download regular image stories, highlights and photos; some of them even let you save live broadcasts, video posts and IGTV. 

To start a bot, you need to find it on Telegram and then press the Start button. Then just follow the guide on the screen.

5. Use screen capturing apps

To search for an application to capture your screen, type the keywords like Screen Recorder or Video Recorder in the search field of your smartphone app store. For example, the VideoShow Screen Recorder application is a good fit (another name is VRecorder on Android, iOS has its counterparts, and all of them operate similarly).

It works very simply - head over to the application, click on the video camera icon in the lower right corner or on the side. Choose a resolution; it depends on the plan you’ve chosen - free or paid. 

Right after choosing the resolution, the app starts recording the screen. To stop recording, click on the timer circle. On the camera icon on the side, you can pause and start recording again. If you click on the lower camera, the recording will simply stop. Videos are automatically saved in the app gallery and a separate folder on your phone.

The disadvantage of this way of saving stories is that the recording must be turned on in advance; otherwise, you’ll have to cut off the extra parts of the video.

6. Install browser extensions

There are various extensions for saving stories from your computer that you can install to your browser, regardless of which you’re using. For example, Story Saver, FastSave for Instagram, and Instagram Downloader.

Install any of the extension to your browser, and you can immediately go to the Instagram account which story you want to download. 

Since we need stories, open one and click on the Download icon in the upper right corner of your browser. 

7. Download via mobile app

There are mobile apps like StorySaver created specifically for downloading stories, but there are even tools that can download videos from different social media platforms, including YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Likee, Facebook, and more. 

8. Online services and sites for saving stories

There are several online services that allow you to download stories from Instagram: StorySaver, Instasaved and Instalkr. They all work similarly - you insert an Instagram username or a link to their profile in the search bar on the site, and the service shows the available stories and highlights. But unlike 4K Stogram we mentioned earlier, these services only work with public profiles.

To get a link to a profile, click on the three dots in the upper right; in the drop-down menu, select "Copy profile URL".

Wrapping up: Save Instagram stories 

There are many ways to download an Instagram story. In fact, there are a lot more tools and services than we have listed. Regardless of the method you choose, downloading and using other people's stories, do not forget about copyright and, if possible, ask for permission. 

We recommend you to use 4K Stogram since it’s a safe and easy-to-use app that offers a wide range of features to download Instagram content without quality loss.