You may never have expected your Instagram account to be such a valued keeper of memories. Intended or not, it could be home to many of your best shots and thoughts. So, what if you want them back? The method is pretty simple. And periodically archiving your digital activity is a good practice to keep even you’re not planning to jump ship.

Instagram provides a tool that takes care of all the heavy lifting and emails the results to you.

You can start the process from mobile or desktop by navigating to the settings (gear) icon in your account. Here’s a link to copy and paste. You must be logged in to Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/download/request/

Once there, enter the email address associated with the account that you’d like archived. It doesn’t have to be the account that you’re logged into but you’ll need the password for the specified account next.

That’s it! Allow up to 48 hours for Instagram servers to process your request and watch for an email containing the download link. Most users receive it within the hour. Just don’t miss it, because you only have four days to download the archive before the link expires, and you can only access it via the link in the email, not through your account settings.

After downloading, extract the .zip file and you’ll find your photos and videos sorted by month.

Because Instagram is photo-centric, it’s the best platform to start with, but the process for Facebook and Google is similar.