Pixelfed Announces Long-Awaited Instagram Import Tool
Pixelfed, the federated photo-sharing service most often compared to Instagram, hit a major milestone on Monday, June 12th, when the project revealed the ability for users to import all of their pictures from their Instagram profiles. Users will need to request their data from Instagram to perform the switchover – but thankfully, the process is really simple.
The resulting .zip archive contains about 27 different folders, but all the import is going to care about today is your content and media folders to recreate your posts. Pixelfed can’t really do anything with comments or messages, because there’s not really anything it can tie those comments to.
Below is a quick slideshow reflecting the process!
Requesting my data from Instagram – this took about 10 minutes to generate the .zip file, which Instagram then emailed me with a link to. 
The Pixelfed import page, where you click a button, and select the .zip you just got from Instagram 
After a moment, Pixelfed shows you your old posts in the browser! 
You can only select up to 100 posts at a time – the good news is that you can come back for a second import and continue where you left off. 
The photos process in the background. You’ll need to keep this tab open for a while, as Pixelfed does the magic behind the scenes. 
LOOK AT ALL THESE POSTS!
To prevent the timeline from getting spammed by everybody importing entire archives, Pixelfed marks imported posts as “Hidden From Timelines” by default. Don’t worry, though – people can still see them on your profile page, and any Instagram post you import can still be federated, if someone has the URL to it.
created_at timestamps.This is an awesome development for the project, and will totally help people who have felt stuck on Instagram because all of their pictures were there.
