Instagram for Linux

An unofficial Instagram desktop client for Linux, built with Electron. It wraps the real instagram.com in a native window and adds desktop-specific extras:

• Persistent login (session cookies survive restarts)
• Native app menu, system tray (close hides to tray instead of quitting)
• Custom video controls injected over every video: seek bar, time, playback speed (0.5x–2x), mute, fullscreen
• One-click download button on hover for photos and videos, saved to ~/Downloads/Instagram
• Keyboard shortcuts: f fullscreen the focused video, m mute, Shift+←/→ seek 5s
• Support for loading unpacked Chrome extensions (video controls, downloaders, ad blockers, etc.)

Running from source

npm install
npm start

Building the AppImage

npm run dist:appimage

Output goes to release/Instagram-<version>.AppImage.

chmod +x release/Instagram-*.AppImage
./release/Instagram-*.AppImage

Adding Chrome extensions

Two ways:

1. Recommended: launch the app, go to menu Extensions → Open Extensions Folder, and drop unpacked extension folders (must contain a manifest.json) there. Then Extensions → Reload Extensions. This folder lives in your user profile (~/.config/Instagram/extensions) and survives app updates/rebuilds.
2. Or place them in the bundled extensions/ folder before building, so they ship inside the AppImage.

To get an "unpacked" folder from a Chrome Web Store extension, install it in Chrome/Chromium, then copy its folder out of ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/<id>/<version>/.

Known extension limitations (Electron, not this app)

• chrome.tabs, chrome.windows, chrome.identity, bookmarks/history APIs are not available.
• Manifest V3 service workers are only partially supported; classic content-script extensions (most video-control/downloader extensions) work best.
• Instagram's strict CSP may block extensions that inject remote scripts.

Known platform issues

• AppImage won't launch / "FUSE" error: newer distros (Ubuntu 22.04+, some Arch setups) don't ship libfuse2 by default. Install it, or run the AppImage with --appimage-extract-and-run.
• Crashes as root or in some sandboxed environments: run with --no-sandbox.

Project layout

src/main.js      Electron main process: window, session, menu, tray, downloads, extension loading
src/preload.js   Injected into instagram.com: video controls, download buttons, IPC bridge
extensions/      Bundled unpacked Chrome extensions (ships inside the AppImage)
build/icons/     App icons