Instagram has degraded its experience for years with ads, distracting videos and an algorithm that sometimes seems schizophrenic at serving up content you're interested in seeing. Now, with parent company Meta abandoning its fact-checking program and no longer blocking misinformation, people are investigating Instagram alternatives. Pixelfed, an open-source service with chronological feeds and no ads, is emerging as a substitute.
But switching to Pixelfed doesn't mean you need to abandon the archive of Instagram posts you've built over the years. Pixelfed has the ability to import Instagram posts, so you can continue sharing your images. I'll walk you through the steps to do it.
First, a few important notes about Pixelfed servers
Before we begin, though, you should know about a few limitations. Pixelfed is a decentralized network of community servers, like the Mastodon social network, and the settings can vary. For instance, make sure the server where you create an account allows imports; the original Pixelfed.social currently has imports disabled and is not accepting new registrations because the influx of traffic is impacting performance. You can create an account on one of many other available Pixelfed servers.
Next, check the Import Help Center page for the server you're using to see what the import limits are. At Pixey.org, for example, imports are limited to 1,000 posts. (If you're currently shopping for a server, go to the bottom of its main page and click Help to locate the Import details.)
Also of note, the importer grabs only photos, not video posts or reels. Those are included in your data you download from Meta, so you can pull them out and upload them individually if you want. And if you've just created a new account, you may need to wait a couple of days before importing is enabled.
Read more: If you're done with Instagram or want to take a break, learn how to delete or deactivate your account.
First, download your Instagram data
The first thing to do is download the posts and media from your Instagram account. I find it's easier to do this on a computer than on a mobile device, so the screenshots below reflect that. Follow these steps:
1. Go to the Meta Accounts Center and log in to your account.
2. Click Your information and permissions in the sidebar.
3. Click Download Your Information.
Start by downloading your data from your Meta account.
4. Click the Download or transfer information button.
5. If you have more than one Meta profile, select your Instagram one on the next screen.
Select your Instagram account.
6. When asked how much information you want, click Available information.
7. Click Download to device.
8. In the Create files to download options, click Date range and set it to All time. If you want to do a test import without downloading everything in your Instagram feed, set the time frame to the last month.
9. Change the Format option to JSON.
10. Change the Media Quality option from Medium to High to ensure you're getting the highest-resolution files it will allow.
11. Finally, click Create files.
Make sure these options are selected to get all your Instagram posts.
Meta will then gather all of your information and send you an email when it's ready to be downloaded. It can take some time for this to happen -- it's not an instant process. However, in my testing the link in the email was set to open the Instagram app, which then threw up an error both on my desktop computer and my phone.
Instead, navigate back to the Download your information step above and click the Download button to grab a .zip archive containing all the data.
I had to return to the site to download my data when it was ready.
Next, import your Instagram photos to Pixelfed
With the files downloaded, sign in to your Pixelfed account and do the following:
1. Click Profile in the sidebar to view your own posts.
2. Click Edit Profile.
3. Click Import in the sidebar.
4. Click the Import button and locate the .zip file you downloaded from Instagram. (If you don't see the Import option, and you just created your account, you may need to wait a couple of days before you can import your data.)
5. Select the posts you want to import. Only 100 posts can be imported at a time, so if you're staring down your entire feed, click the Select first 100 posts button.
6. Click Import.
Upload your photos in batches of 100.
It takes some time to upload the data and process it. I put the window in the background while I worked on other things and refreshed the page later.
Repeat the process above if you have more than 100 photos -- the importer skips the ones already added, so you can click Select first 100 posts again and get a fresh batch.
After they've been added, you'll see they contain the same descriptions, hashtags and dates as the original Instagram posts.