Gallery-dl: Mass Download High-Res Images from Pixiv, Instagram, and Pinterest

Stop right-clicking images one by one. Here's how to download entire albums in original quality with a single command.

I've been collecting reference images for design work - Pinterest boards with thousands of pins, Pixiv artists with hundreds of works, Instagram accounts I wanted to archive. Right-clicking everything wasn't going to work.

Tried a few options first. Browser extensions mostly grabbed thumbnails instead of original images. Some desktop apps worked but quality was inconsistent. Writing my own scripts with requests/BeautifulSoup got blocked pretty quickly.

Eventually came across gallery-dl. It's a command-line tool that handles a bunch of image hosting sites. The main thing that stood out was it actually downloads the original files - no compression, no resizing.

Quality difference

Ran a test on a Pixiv artist to compare:

Method Resolution File size
Right-click save 1200x1200 ~400 KB
Gallery-dl 6000x6000 (original) ~8 MB

That's the difference - gallery-dl pulls the exact file the artist uploaded. No browser compression applied.

Installation

pip install gallery-dl

Or on macOS: brew install gallery-dl

Basic usage

Just paste the URL:

# Pixiv - all works from an artist
gallery-dl "https://www.pixiv.net/users/12345"

# Instagram - all posts from a profile
gallery-dl "https://www.instagram.com/username/"

# Pinterest - entire board
gallery-dl "https://www.pinterest.com/username/board-name/"

It creates folders automatically:

Pixiv/
├── artist_12345/
│   ├── 8473291_1_p0.png
│   └── 8473291_1_p1.png
└── artist_67890/

Cookies (for restricted content)

Some content requires login - R-18 content on Pixiv, private Instagram accounts, etc. This is the part that confused me initially.

Gallery-dl doesn't handle login forms. You export cookies from your browser after logging in manually:

Get a cookie export extension

"Get cookies.txt LOCALLY" for Chrome/Edge works well. There's also "cookies.txt" for Firefox.

Export and configure

1. Log into the site in your browser
2. Click the extension, export cookies.txt
3. Create config file: ~/.config/gallery-dl/config.json

Add to config.json:

{
  "extractor": {
    "pixiv": {
      "cookies": "~/cookies/pixiv.txt"
    },
    "instagram": {
      "cookies": "~/cookies/instagram.txt"
    }
  }
}

Or use browser cookies directly (simpler): 

{
  "extractor": {
    "pixiv": {
      "cookies": "chrome"
    }
  }
}

Supported: chrome, chromium, firefox, safari, opera

Options I use

Filter by resolution:

gallery-dl --filter "width >= 1920" "URL"

Download specific range (good for re-running):

gallery-dl --range 1-50 "URL"
gallery-dl --range 51-100 "URL"

Skip files you already have:

gallery-dl --download-archive downloaded.txt "URL"

Custom filenames:

{
  "extractor": {
    "pixiv": {
      "filename": "{artist_id}_{id}_{title}.{extension}"
    }
  }
}

Issues I ran into

403 Forbidden with cookies configured

Turned out the cookie format was wrong. Some extensions export as JSON but gallery-dl expects Netscape format. "Get cookies.txt LOCALLY" exports in the right format.

Permission denied on Windows

Some filenames had characters Windows doesn't allow. Fixed with:

{
  "extractor": {
    "filename": "{mangle:.50}.{extension}",
    "path-replace": "_"
  }
}

Getting rate limited

Pixiv started blocking after ~200 downloads. Added delays:

{
  "extractor": {
    "sleep": 3
  },
  "downloader": {
    "parallel": 1
  }
}

Instagram images still low res

Needed to explicitly enable original quality:

{
  "extractor": {
    "instagram": {
      "include": "posts,stories",
      "videos": true
    }
  }
}

Supported sites

The --list-extractors flag shows everything. Main ones I've used:

Notes

Gallery-dl repo: github.com/mikf/gallery-dl