Connect YouTube to Instagram

Before you start

• A YouTube channel. Any channel you can sign in to works, monetized or not.
• An Instagram Business or Creator account. Instagram only lets apps post to professional accounts. Switch for free in the Instagram app under Settings, then Account type and tools.
• A Post Once account. The free plan includes 10 reposts, with no card needed.

How to connect YouTube to Instagram

1. Create a free account at app.postonce.com. After two short intro screens, Post Once asks where you post.

2. Under Where do you post first?, pick YouTube and press Continue.

   

3. Under Where else should it land?, pick Instagram. Add any other apps, or a backup, then press Continue.

4. On Connect your accounts., press Connect on the YouTube row. Sign in with the Google account that owns your channel and allow access.

   

5. Press Connect on the Instagram row. Sign in on Instagram’s page. If you have several accounts, choose the one Post Once should post to, then allow access.

6. When both rows say Connected, press Go to dashboard.

From then on, keep posting on YouTube as usual. Post Once checks it about every five minutes and reposts each new post to Instagram.

Already using Post Once?

If YouTube is already the source of your bridge, open Bridge and press Connect next to Instagram in the Destinations card, or press Add destination on the dashboard.

If your bridge reads from another account, add a second bridge with YouTube as its source from the bridge switcher. Free and Solo include 1 bridge, Studio 3 and Agency as many as you need. See bridges.

What each YouTube post becomes on Instagram

On YouTube	On Instagram
A Short	A Reel, if it runs from 3 seconds to 3 minutes.
A video over 3 minutes, or a landscape one	Skipped, with “Instagram only takes short vertical videos”.

A skipped post shows the reason on your dashboard and still goes to your other destinations. See long videos for how Post Once tells short from long.

How your caption carries over

The video’s description becomes the caption. A video with no description uses its title instead. Private and unlisted videos are not picked up, and neither are community posts.

Instagram takes captions up to 2,200 characters. Stories have no caption.

Choose what goes to Instagram

On the Bridge page, the Instagram row has two settings.

• What to post has one switch here, Videos, since videos are all that go from YouTube to Instagram. Turning it off pauses Instagram.
• Rewrite caption changes the caption for Instagram only: Remove comment, DM and link in bio prompts, Remove hashtags and mentions, Rewrite with AI to suit Instagram, and Add your own text at the start or end. Each one is off until you turn it on.

Check that it works

Post something on YouTube as usual. Within about five minutes it shows up under Your posts on the dashboard (press Check now to look straight away), then goes to Instagram. Each post shows where it went, what was skipped and why.

If a repost fails, Post Once tries again up to 5 times over about half an hour. If it still fails, you get an email, and Retry sends it again to just the accounts it missed. See a post did not repost.

Only posts published after you connect are reposted on their own. Older ones are listed in Your posts, where you can send any of them by hand.