Instagram has finally announced the arrival of a feature that users have been waiting for a long time: the possibility of downloading Reels. For now, this feature will be enabled only for public profiles. For its part, TikTok has been offering this one for a while now.
Instagram fooled no one in 2019 when it introduced its Reels, a (quite pale, admittedly) copy of TikTok. The objective is of course to compete with its Chinese rival, which now reigns supreme among the youngest Internet users, even if it means drawing inspiration very openly from all the features deployed by the latter. TikTok is extending the length of its videos? Instagram does the same with its own. And so on.
Yet a feature that some will deem essential has long been built into TikTok, but is still missing on Instagram. Indeed, on the Meta social network, it is still impossible to download the Reels of other users, something that its competitor has been allowing for a long time. For once, Instagram is now trying to catch up.
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Instagram will allow you to download Reels
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri himself broke the big news. By a next update, it will be possible to download the Reels that cross our newsfeed. To do this, just press the button Share, whose menu will soon display the option Download. As shown in an image shared by Adam Mosseri, which you can see above, the resulting video will be watermarked with the Instagram logo and the name of the creator.
The thing is not really a surprise in itself, TikTok having opted for the same compromise, but above all, given Instagram’s reluctance to share its content on other platforms. To date, the social network has certainly authorized the simultaneous publication of its Reels on Facebook, but that’s about it. Also, the button Download will only appear on Reels whose creator has a public profile. It will therefore not be possible to download private Reels.