How to Download an Instagram Carousel at Once (All Photos + Videos)
Published Jul 30, 2026 · 6 min read
Last updated Jul 30, 2026 · By Yagnesh Hihoriya, Founder of SnapDown
You found the perfect Instagram carousel — a ten-slide recipe, a travel photo dump, a step-by-step tutorial — and you want to keep all of it. The problem: Instagram has no "save all" button. Tapping through and screenshotting each slide is slow, it strips the image quality, and it completely skips any video slides mixed into the post.
This guide shows you how to download an Instagram carousel all photos at once — every slide, photo and video, from a single post — packaged into one ZIP file. It runs in your browser on any phone or computer, with no app to install and no login.
🎠 Save the Whole Carousel
Paste one carousel link and get every slide as a single ZIP — free.
Open the Carousel Downloader →What Is an Instagram Carousel (Slideshow)?
A carousel — sometimes called an Instagram slideshow or album — is a single post that holds more than one piece of media. You swipe sideways through the slides, and the little row of dots under the post tells you how many there are. A carousel can contain up to 20 slides, and here is the part that trips people up: those slides can be a mix of photos and videos in any order. Slide 1 might be a cover photo, slides 2–4 short clips, and the rest stills.
That mixed-media design is exactly why saving a carousel is harder than saving a normal post. A screenshot only captures the photo slides — and only at screen resolution — while the video slides are lost entirely. To keep the full post you need every slide in its original format, which is what a proper Instagram slideshow downloader does for you.
Why Saving Slides One by One Fails
The manual route feels obvious — swipe, screenshot, swipe, screenshot — but it breaks down fast:
- Quality loss: a screenshot is a re-photograph of your screen, not the original file. You lose resolution and pick up your status bar and UI.
- Videos are skipped: you cannot screenshot a moving clip, so every video slide in the carousel is missed.
- It is slow and error-prone: a 20-slide post means 20 taps, 20 saves, and a camera roll full of clutter to sort through afterward.
- Order gets lost: screenshots land out of sequence, so a step-by-step tutorial or recipe no longer reads in order.
How to Download All Carousel Photos at Once
Copy the Carousel Post Link
Open the carousel in the Instagram app or on the web. Tap the ••• menu at the top of the post and choose "Copy Link". You only need the link to the post itself — not to a single slide — because the tool reads the whole album from it.
Paste It Into Carousel ZIP Mode
Open the Instagram carousel downloader and switch to the Carousel ZIP tab. Paste the link into the box. SnapDown reads the post server-side and finds every slide it contains, whether that is 2 or the full 20.
Download Everything as One ZIP
Hit "Download as ZIP". Every slide is fetched in its original quality, numbered in order, and bundled into a single archive that downloads to your device. Unzip it and the whole carousel is there — photos as JPG, videos as MP4, nothing missing.
What You Get Inside the ZIP
A carousel download is not a screenshot bundle — it is the real media Instagram stores. Here is how each slide type comes out:
| Slide type | Saved as | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| Photo slide | JPG | Original upload resolution — no re-compression |
| Video slide | MP4 | Highest resolution Instagram stores, with audio |
| Whole carousel | One .zip | All slides, numbered and in order |
Because the files are numbered in sequence, a tutorial or recipe stays readable in the right order, and you can drop the whole folder straight into a design tool or a backup drive.
Photos and Videos in One Carousel
Mixed carousels are the whole reason a dedicated tool matters. Say a fashion brand posts a 12-slide look-book where slides 1, 4, and 9 are short runway clips and the rest are stills. Screenshotting leaves you with 9 photos and 3 blank frames where the videos were. Carousel ZIP mode instead returns all 12 items — the 9 photos as JPG and the 3 clips as MP4 with their audio intact — so nothing about the post is lost. You do not have to tell the tool which slides are which; it detects the type of every slide automatically.
Who Saves an Entire Carousel?
A carousel is Instagram's format for anything that needs more than one frame, so the reasons to save one whole are just as varied:
Building a mood board from a multi-slide look-book or campaign post — every slide as a clean file, not a screenshot with a status bar across the top.
Keeping a step-by-step carousel — a recipe, a tutorial, a how-to thread — as an offline reference that stays in the right order.
Archiving a competitor's product carousels or a trend for later analysis, without having to reopen Instagram each time.
Grabbing your own multi-slide posts before you edit or delete them, so the full set lives safely on your drive.
Carousel ZIP vs Bulk Profile Download
"Download everything" can mean two different things. Pick the mode that matches what you actually want:
| You want… | Use this mode | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Every slide of one post | Carousel ZIP | Up to 20 slides per post |
| Many posts from one account | Profile download | Up to 50 posts per ZIP |
| Specific posts from different accounts | Multi-link batch | Up to 20 links at once |
If you are trying to archive a whole account rather than a single album, read our guide to the bulk downloader for entire profiles, which walks through saving up to 50 posts in one pass. For everything Instagram — reels, stories, photos, and more — start from the pillar guide on how to download from Instagram.
Honest Limits Worth Knowing
- 20 slides is the ceiling because that is Instagram's own maximum for a single carousel — the tool grabs whatever the post actually holds up to that.
- Public posts only. Private accounts are protected; if you cannot open the post logged out, the downloader cannot reach it either.
- Personal use. A carousel you did not create still belongs to its author. Saving it for offline reference is one thing; re-uploading it as your own can breach copyright.
- Quality is capped by the upload. No tool can invent detail that was never uploaded — you get the best file Instagram stored, not better.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many photos can one Instagram carousel hold?
An Instagram carousel can hold up to 20 slides, and each slide can be a photo or a video. SnapDown grabs every slide in the post — however many there are — and packages them into one ZIP.
Can I download all carousel photos at once instead of one by one?
Yes. Paste the carousel post link into the Carousel ZIP mode and SnapDown downloads every slide together as a single ZIP file, so you never have to save each photo individually.
Does it download the videos in a mixed carousel too?
It does. If a carousel mixes photos and videos, all of them are included — photos as JPG and videos as MP4 — in the same ZIP, in the order they appear in the post.
Will the photos lose quality?
No. SnapDown pulls the original file Instagram stores for each slide, so photos keep their full resolution instead of the compressed version you get from a screenshot.
Can I download a carousel from a private account?
No. Only public posts can be downloaded. If an account is private, you would need to be an approved follower, and the tool cannot access that content.
Is there a limit on how many carousels I can save?
There is no daily limit on individual carousels. If you want to grab many posts from one profile at once, use the bulk profile mode instead, which handles up to 50 posts in a single ZIP.