How to get an Instagram token for showing feed on your website?

In this tutorial, you will see how to get an Instagram token in two different ways. The general settings of the Instagram feed you can find here. As we respect user privacy we don’t want to have access to your account for an automated token generation with a login. 

Generate token with the Spotlight generator

Spotlight, an awesome Instagram plugin provides a ready-to-use tool for the token generation with a single click. In case you think the process of building an app is too complicated you can use it.

Here is how to get a token key:

1. Open the token generator page https://spotlightwp.com/access-token-generator/
2. Click on generate the token button and confirm access to your account.

Generate Token in Facebook Developer Center

You don’t need to create a separate application for Instagram token and access to the basic graph API. If you already have such (for example for share counters) you can use it. In this case, skip the first 3 steps.

Step 1

Visit the Facebook Developer Center: https://developers.facebook.com/ and create a new application from the menu.

Step 2

Fill the application name and verify your email

Step 3

Visit the basic settings and fill the following information: Privacy Policy URL, Terms of Service URL, Category (Business and Pages is good to go). Optional you can select the domain name which app can use (to prevent unauthorized usage on other sites) – the App Domains field.

The changes above are required to make the application public accessible on the top of the developer center. By clicking on OFF it will go to green ON.

When you are ready with the public app press the Show button next to the secret. You need to reveal the application ID and secret to generate the required token.

Step 4

Open the main application dashboard and click to set up the Basic Instagram Display API.

Enter the name of your application (you can leave the default or set a new one). This name you will use later with the account connection.

Step 5

After you have the application created you need to add your account as an Instagram API tester. You can add multiple users to a single app for a token generation as long as you have the ability to verify the app in the Instagram account.

Put the Instagram username you need to have a token for.

If everything is successfully you will see the account as pending.

Step 6

For this step, you need to open your Instagram account in the browser.

Click on apps and websites and go to the tester section.

Confirm access to the application you create in the previous steps

Step 7

In this step, we return back to the Facebook developer to get the token key. At first, you can verify that everything is OK with the account. Where you see a pending state, now it will show as connected.

Go to the Basic Display settings screen and scroll down till you see your account.

Press the Generate token button and follow the on-screen instructions to confirm the application access.

When you complete this you will see a screen where your token key is. For privacy it is hidden and you need to tick the check to see it fully.