--- title: "How to find your saved posts on Instagram" description: "Where Instagram hides your saved posts, how collections work, how to download the list, and how to get them somewhere you can search." source: https://savepad.app/blog/instagram-saved-posts --- [Blog](https://savepad.app/blog) · 16 October 2024 # How to find (and organise) your saved posts on Instagram Where Instagram hides your saved posts, how collections work, how to download the list, and how to get them somewhere you can search. *Instagram posts saved into a Savepad folder as a masonry moodboard, sorted by colour* **TLDR** - Your saved posts live in **Profile → menu (☰) → Saved**. The same list is behind the bookmark icon under any post. - **Collections** are folders for saves. Tap and hold the bookmark icon on a post to put it straight in one. - To get them all out: **Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Download your information**, pick **Saved** and **JSON**. You get links, not the posts. - Instagram’s saved tab is fine for “later tonight”. It’s a dead end for “that ad from last spring”. ## Where saved posts are On the app: 1. Go to your **profile**. 2. Tap the **menu** (three lines, top right). 3. Tap **Saved**. You’ll see **All posts** plus any collections you’ve made. Only you can see these. The person who posted doesn’t know you saved it. On the web, click **More** (bottom left) and then **Saved**, or go to your profile and click the **Saved** tab. ## Organising them into collections - **Save straight into one:** tap and hold the bookmark icon under a post, then pick a collection or make a new one. - **Move old saves:** in Saved, open a collection, tap the **three dots** and **Add to collection**, then pick posts from All posts. - **Rename or delete:** open the collection, three dots, **Edit collection**. Deleting a collection doesn’t unsave the posts. They stay in All posts. ## Getting them all out There’s no “export saved posts” button, but they’re in your account data: 1. **Settings → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Download your information.** 2. Pick your Instagram account, then **Some of your information**, and tick **Saved**. 3. Choose **Download to device**, format **JSON**, date range **All time**. 4. Instagram emails you when it’s ready. Usually minutes, sometimes a day. The link expires after a few days. Inside the ZIP is a file of your saved posts. What you get is a list of links and dates, not the images or videos themselves. ## Why the saved tab is a dead end *A mock Instagram story ad for a fictional drinks brand, Coldco* 0458 · instagram · story *A mock Instagram feed ad for a fictional mattress brand, Dozy* 0555 · instagram · feed *A mock reel thumbnail for a fictional sock brand, Oddsocks* 0652 · instagram · reel The kind of thing you save on Instagram and never find again: an ad you liked, a story from a brand, a reel with a good hook. - **No search.** You can’t search your saves by brand, word or anything else. You scroll. - **Posts vanish.** If the account deletes a post or goes private, it’s gone from your saves too. - **Ads disappear with the campaign.** Once it ends, the sponsored post you saved is often gone. - **It’s only Instagram.** The TikTok, the landing page and the email from the same campaign live somewhere else. ## Keeping the ones that matter For the posts you actually want to keep (the ad you’ll reference in a brief, the carousel structure you want to copy), save them somewhere of your own. In Savepad, share the post from the Instagram app to your Savepad email address, or paste the link. It keeps the image or video thumbnail, pulls out the colours and reads any text in it, so “new flavour” finds the story. Put it next to the landing page it linked to, in the same folder. That’s a proper [ad swipe file](https://savepad.app/blog/ad-swipe-file). For ads you never saved at all, the [Meta Ad Library](https://savepad.app/blog/meta-ad-library) shows everything currently running on Instagram and Facebook, and the [ad library search](https://savepad.app/free-tools/ad-library-search) looks across Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and Google in one go. [Join the waitlist](https://savepad.app/#waitlist) ## Read these next - [How to use the Meta Ad Library to see every ad your competitors run: Search any brand's live Facebook and Instagram ads, spot the ones that are working, and save them before they get switched off.](https://savepad.app/blog/meta-ad-library) - [How to organize screenshots on a Mac (and get them off your desktop): Move screenshots out of your desktop, name them sensibly, sort the backlog, and make them searchable by what's in them. Settings, shortcuts and two Terminal lines.](https://savepad.app/blog/organize-screenshots-mac) - [How to find out what font a website is using: Three ways to identify a website's font in under a minute: your browser's DevTools, an extension, or a font matcher for images. Plus what to do once you've found it.](https://savepad.app/blog/find-website-font)