Reels might not have been Instagram’s original idea. Nonetheless, they have blown up and become an integral part of the app. Whether you love creating and sharing them or simply spending your time viewing them, you have got to love them.

It’s only natural to want to save a reel to your camera roll, whether it’s a reel you made or a reel you found on Instagram and loved so much. Saving reels you create is an easy enough task and only a matter of a couple of taps. But if you want to save someone else’s reel, things aren’t that simple. There is no such option available since it involves complex copyright violations. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible – only that you need to tread carefully in a possibly gray zone. So, whatever you came here looking for, let’s dive in and find it.

Saving your Reel to the Camera Roll

With the time and energy you need to put in to create a reel, it only makes sense to want to share it on your other social media accounts, as well. Fortunately, Instagram has made downloading your reels a piece of cake. The only catch? The downloaded reel will have a watermark in the form of your username, audio used, and the Instagram icon. When you create a reel, most of the time, the audio you use belongs to someone else, hence the watermark when downloading it officially.

To save a reel to your camera roll on your iPhone, open the Instagram app. Then, go to the ‘Profile’ tab from the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Go to the ‘Reels’ tab from your profile and open the reel you want to save.

Then, tap the ‘three-dot menu’ at the bottom-right corner of the reel.

Few options would appear on the screen. Tap the ‘Save to camera roll’ option from the menu.

Note: Take care to tap the ‘Save to camera roll’ option and not the ‘Save’ option. The latter would only save the reel to the collection of your saved posts on Instagram and not the camera roll.

And that’s it. It’ll take a couple of seconds but the reel will be saved to your camera roll.

Saving a Draft

While saving a reel you have already shared is easy, you might want to save a reel without sharing it with all your followers. Instagram lets you keep as many reel drafts as you want but saving these drafts to your camera rolls is a tad tricky. When saving a draft to your camera roll, there’s no way to save it with the audio. You can only save it without the audio; to download it with the audio, you’ll first have to share it.

To save a draft, go to the ‘Reels’ tab from your Profile on Instagram and tap the thumbnail for ‘Drafts’. Open the draft you want to save.

The sharing screen for the draft will open. Tap the ‘Edit’ option in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Reel preview will begin. Tap the ‘Download’ button from the options at the top of the screen.

The message stating that the video will be saved without the audio will appear on the screen. Tap ‘Save’ to download the video.

Saving Someone Else’s Reel

If you loved someone else’s reel so much that you want to download it, you’re in a trickier area involving copyright violations. Saving and resharing someone else’s reel without their permission is ethically and legally wrong. But if you still want to download a reel, there are a few ways. You could either use the screen recorder on your iPhone or employ the help of a third-party app or website.

Note: If you want to only save the reel so you can watch it later at any time, you can instead save (bookmark) it on Instagram. To save a reel, tap the three-dot menu and then tap ‘Save’ from the options. You can then access it from the ‘Saved’ section of your profile and you can access it from any device you’re using your account on. But it won’t be available offline on your device.

Use the Screen Recorder on your iPhone

iPhone has a native screen recording tool that you can use to record and save the reels to your camera roll. You can access it from the Control Center, but if you don’t have it as one of the controls, you’ll first have to add it.

To add it to the Control Center, open the Settings app on your iPhone. Then, scroll down and tap the option for ‘Control Center’.

Then, go to the ‘More Controls’ section, and tap the ‘+’ on the left of the ‘Screen Recording’ tile.

It’ll move to the ‘Included Controls’ section. You can rearrange its position in the Control Center if you want.

Now, when you encounter a reel on Instagram that you want to save, swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen or swipe up from the bottom of your screen (depending on your device) to access Control Center. Then, tap the option for ‘Screen Recording’.

iOS will display a reverse countdown of 3 seconds. During this time, close the Control Center so the reel is visible on your screen when the timer ends and the recording starts. Make sure that the reel audio is on while you’re recording.

Once you’ve recorded it, tap the red bar that indicates that the recording is going on to stop the recording.

Then, tap ‘Stop’ from the confirmation pop-up that appears on your screen. The reel will be saved to your camera roll where you can edit it and trim the beginning or middle of the video if you want.

Use Third-Party Websites or Apps

Screen recording has its drawbacks. Everything on the screen is included in the downloaded video; that includes the username, caption, and the like, comment, and share buttons.

If you want a neat download, you can use third-party apps or websites to download it. You can also use these to download your own reel without a username watermark. There are many options available out there, so it’s impossible to recommend the best app or website. But here are a few recommendations that we find are easy to use.

Kapwing

Kapwing is an online video editor that also lets you get a video from Instagram and edit it. So, using Kapwing, you cannot only download a reel from Instagram, but you can also make any edits along the way. It also allows you to download a few videos each month without any watermarks if you sign in with a free account. You can also use it to save reels on your computer or Android devices.

To start, first, go to the reel you want to download and tap the three-dot menu in the bottom-right corner.

Then, tap ‘Copy link’ from the overlay menu.

Now, go to kapwing.com from any browser on your iPhone. Then, tap Sign in to sign in with a Google account or create a new account. Tap ‘Get Started’ or ‘Create a new project’ after signing in to begin.

Go to the textbox that says “Paste a URL” and paste the link for the reel you previously copied from Instagram.

It’ll start fetching the video as soon as you paste the link. It might take some time for it to load, though. Once it loads, if you see a white screen instead of the video, go to the ‘Media’ tab and you’ll find the video there.

Tap the video to load it.

If you want to trim and edit the video, you can do it from the editor. Otherwise, tap the ‘Export’ option at the top-right corner.

It’ll take a few seconds to process. Once the processing completes, scroll down and tap the ‘Download file’ option to save it to your camera roll.

The downloaded video won’t have any of the information like username, etc. from Instagram. Nor will it have the Kapwing watermark if you sign in to download it and still have downloads without the watermark left.

InstDown for Instagram Reels

InstDown for Instagram Reels is an app that makes it eerily easy to download any reel to your camera roll. Go to the App Store and search for the app. Then, tap ‘Get’ to install it on your phone.

Once installed, go to Instagram and copy the link for the reel you want to save.

Then, open the app you just installed. If there are any pop-ups regarding tracking, choose the options accordingly. Once you get to the home page of the app, the video you copied the link for will automatically appear there. Tap the ‘Generate’ button.

The download will be added to the queue. You can check the download status by going to the ‘More’ tab from the toolbar at the bottom.

Once the download is complete, the reel will appear in your camera roll. There will be no watermarks or usernames in the downloaded video.

These short forms of content have quickly soared to great heights of popularity. No matter your reason for wanting to download a reel, hopefully, this guide will serve you and help you do exactly what you want.