After several weeks of testing, Instagram has now rolled out the option to download publicly posted Reels to your camera roll, providing another way to share Reels content.
As per Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri:
“In the US, we’re rolling out the ability to download reels shared by public accounts to your camera roll. Just tap the ‘Share’ icon on a reel you love and selected ‘Download’.”
As a result, TikTok material can be shared more widely. Even without a direct link to the creators’ profiles, the addition of their username on the clip can still assist to strengthen their branding. Nevertheless, there are some restrictions to this update. The audio troubles some users have encountered with some Reels material may be related to Meta’s music licensing agreements.
Not all videos will be downloadable, and you cannot save anything that has been privately posted because creators might choose not to enable downloads of their content in their Account Settings.
And for now, it’s only accessible to a limited number of US users. Outside of that, it will give creators another opportunity to spread their content across as many platforms as possible, basically following the example set by TikTok, which has allowed video downloads since forever.
Thus, the only real surprise is that it took IG this long to enable the feature; nonetheless, by allowing connection back to creators’ original posts within the app, it was probably seeking to better safeguard creators.
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