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how-to-get-instagram-cookie.md

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title How to Get Your Instagram Cookie
description Step-by-step visual walkthrough to securely extract your Instagram session cookie from your desktop browser.

🔑 How to Get Your Instagram Cookie

This guide explains how to extract your Instagram session cookie to authenticate the scraper.

📌 Important Security Notes

Important

  • Your cookie acts like a digital password for your Instagram session. Never share it publicly.
  • Do NOT log out of Instagram in the browser where you extracted the cookie, as logging out immediately revokes the session ID. Simply close the tab instead.
  • Using a secondary burner Instagram account or exporting from a dedicated browser profile is recommended for extra isolation.

🌐 Method 1: Using Browser DevTools (Recommended)

Works on Google Chrome, Brave, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox.

Step-by-Step Walkthrough

  1. Log in to Instagram: Open https://www.instagram.com on your desktop browser and ensure you are logged in.

  2. Open Developer Tools: Press F12 (or right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect / Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows, Cmd+Option+I on Mac).

  3. Navigate to the Network Tab:

    • Click the Network tab at the top of the Developer Tools panel.
    • In the filter box, type graphql or instagram.com.

  4. Trigger a Request:

    • Refresh the page (F5 or Cmd+R) or click on your profile/saved tab.
    • You will see multiple network requests populate in the list.

  5. Copy the Cookie:

    • Click on any request made to instagram.com (e.g. graphql/query or feed/saved/).
    • In the right-hand panel, select the Headers tab.
    • Scroll down to the Request Headers section.
    • Locate cookie: or Cookie:.
    • Right-click the value and select Copy value (or select all text and copy).
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Request Headers                                                        │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ accept: */*                                                            │
│ cookie: csrftoken=...; ds_user_id=123456789; sessionid=123456%3A...;  │
│ user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 ...                                            │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
  1. Paste into InstaSave Tracker: Paste the full cookie string into the Onboarding Wizard or Settings page and click Test & Verify Cookie.

🧩 Method 2: Using a Cookie Extension (Alternative)

If you prefer using an extension:

  1. Install a reputable cookie manager like Cookie-Editor (available for Chrome and Firefox).
  2. Navigate to instagram.com.
  3. Click the Cookie-Editor icon in your browser toolbar.
  4. Click Export -> Export as Header String.
  5. Paste the exported string into InstaSave Tracker.

🔍 Required Cookie Tokens

For successful scraping, the cookie string must contain at least:

  • sessionid: Your active Instagram session token.
  • ds_user_id: Your Instagram numeric user ID.
  • csrftoken: The CSRF verification token.

If any of these are missing, Instagram will reject the request with login_required.