Instagram Rolls Out New Feature to Download Public Reels

Instagram has quickly become one of the most engaging platforms to share short videos and is in direct competition with TikTok. The Meta-owned social media app has over 2.35 billion monthly active users. Even though the app is quite popular for its short videos aka Reels, users were unable to download it natively and had to use third-party downloaders to share content on other platforms. But, it’s finally happening now. Instagram has finally rolled out a feature that allows you to download Reels posted by others so you can share and view them outside of the app. To remind you

TikTok has had these features for years and gained popularity with people watching watermarked short videos outside the app. 

On Tuesday, Adam Mosseri, the company’s head, took to his Instagram broadcast channel to share this news. According to him, the new Download feature will allow US-based users to download Reels to their Camera Roll or say phone’s Gallery. One can easily download Reels by tapping on the share icon and selecting the Download option. However, there’s a catch. 

Mosseri exclusively mentioned that users can only download Reels from a Public account. Plus, a public account can choose to disable the download Reels feature from Settings.

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That said, Mosseri didn’t mention anything about watermarks in the videos. However, the image posted by him suggests that the downloaded Reels will have watermarked Instagram logo and the username of the user. For those who are unaware, TikTok and other short-video-sharing platforms use the same format to add watermarks on the downloaded videos. 

It is worth mentioning that in 2021 Instagram stopped promoting content with the TikTok watermark (or any other watermark). That’s not all, YouTube also started to overlay a watermark on the downloaded Shorts – the company’s short video product just like Instagram Reels. 

So, we can say that Instagram has jumped into the pool and introduced this feature as a tactic to bring more audience to the platform. Moreover,

there is no word from the company about the expansion of this feature in other regions. 

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Banner Image Source: Instagram