Overview

The “Archive” feature has been released within Instagram since June 13th, 2017 & till this day the platform still does not allow its users to archive more than one photo at once. Regardless of the photo count, this is a daunting task but we’ve put together a workaround to circumvent all the manual labor with the help of an android emulator & macros.

Getting Setup

The steps below walk through the process on a Mac since the available emulators I’ve tested are currently limited & required us to use a separate program for the macro in parallel with our emulator. Nonetheless, this is easier on Windows since Nox has the macro record embedded so I’ll just link how to use it.

Prerequisites

The Journey

Assuming you have all the prerequisites installed & followed the explicit instructions regarding the security acceptions, we’ll be jumping right in. At a high level, we’ll be installing an Android emulator onto our machine to simulate a smartphone/tablet. Once installed we’ll then start our emulator, head to the play store where we’ll register our Gmail account to install Instagram to finally run our macro &archive all the photos.

  1. Open up BlueStacks & head to the Google Playstore to install Instagram. I’ve already had it installed here but you will be prompted to link your Gmail account before installing any applications.
  1. Open up MurGaa. It runs as a standalone .app & does not require any installation steps other than allowing it to control your computer to run the macro. (can be reverted)
  1. Now we’re going to set up both programs side by side & record our mouse clicks to create our macro. While it’s not required, it’s advised to set up your keyboard shortcuts to stop & start your sessions.

via Gfycat

  1. Now that our macro is ready, we just need to choose how many times to run & let the automation run its course! (The example shows 3 sequences repeated.)
  1. While your macro is running, your free to walk away & periodically check the progress from your device to confirm but here we can see that it took me roughly an hour to archive 600+ photos.
### Now What?

You’re now free to live your life! Rebrand, go off the map or slowly re-post the photos you wish to showcase!

While our digital footprints are becoming much more prominent & dictating towards our futures as a social credit score, I’m sure some may consider rebrand or removing all posts as a whole. A hairline may be a beautiful thing to reflect & think back upon but the content we’ve posted years ago might not reflect who we are today.

Hopefully, this post will be obsolete once Instagram provides the feature to bulk-archive but for now… feel free to share!