Best way to avoid time-outs when downloading multiple "post types" (--igtv, --highlights, --story)

Does running instaloader one at a time for each “post type” flag (e.g. instaloader --igtv & instaloader --highlights & instaloader --story) have the same amount of http requests as running it all in one go ('instaloader --igtv -highlights --story`) ?

At the moment I have a script in which I’m calling instaloader each time depending on what I want to include in the download to save it in separate locations. But I think there may be a way for me to do it all in one go & still have post types seprated into different locations accurately.

But if I still come across the “too many http requests” issue at the same rate, then there’s no point in me racking my brain to make it work.

[ekalin]

The count is done by IG’s servers. Instaloader keeps its own count (trying to replicate what IG does, but it’s all reverse-engineered, and IG is constantly changing) in the hopes of never hitting the threshold that causes IG to return a 429 error.

But it can only do so in one run. If one run ends and you start another shortly after, this second run cannot know that the first run already had already made requests that get you very close to a 429 error.

So running periodically is worst you can do, unless you leave a long interval between runs, say, one hour or more.

[ekalin]

If you run instaloder twice for different media types, there’ll be at least one extra request, since the profile must be fetched. But I think that the profile fetching is unlikely to make a significant difference for rate limiting.

However, instaloader keeps track of requests and tries to slow down when the limit is being reached, but this only works in a single run. If you run instaloader again, it starts counting requests from zero; requests from the previous run are not considered. That increases a lot the chances of getting a 429 error.