Noob here. How do I configure gallery-dl for Instagram?

[avekifes]

I'm aware that the Configuration page exists, but can someone point me toward a better resource on how to get things started? I have no clue where to begin with certain things, like creating a list of accounts that gallery-dl will automatically try to download for each run...assuming that's even possible.

[BanementI]

if you're still clueless, i can help with that. i dont scrape instagram but its just like any other extractor.
you can provide a list of accounts for gallery-dl to scrape, and pass it through as --input-file <file>.
download a browser addon that lets you export cookies.txt. i use this one for firefox. to get your instagram cookies, open instagram while logged in in a tab, click the cookies.txt addon, get "current site", save that somewhere. then its easy from here:

1. open a cmd/terminal with gallery-dl available
2. save/move the cookies from earlier to this directory
3. gallery-dl <url> --cookies <cookie file> OR gallery-dl --input-file <list of urls> --cookies <cookie file>
   (you can do -d to specify the download directory)
   

[quietsecret123]

Hi, thanks for posting these instructions!

Is there a way to just download stories without the actual posts? IG is cracking down, so I'm trying to reduce the number of API calls.

[kookie99]

This is what I include in my config file for scraping Instagram. It is under the extractor category.
"instagram":
{
"api": "rest",
"cookies": "C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\gallery-dl\www.instagram.com_cookies.txt",
"include": "posts,stories,reels,highlights",
"order-files": "asc",
"order-posts": "asc",
"previews": true,
"sleep-request": [5.0, 8.0],
"videos": true
},