Here's How to Get Your Instagram Top 9 This Year
Posting your nine most-popular Instagram posts is a hallowed year-end tradition. Here's how to do it.
Another annual social media rite of passage has arrived. Every year, the denizens of Instagram post their top nine images of the year during that reflective final week of the calendar.
The Instagram top-nine can be grabbed from multiple sites, but the gist of it is always the same. You're pulling the nine most popular images you posted over the last year. It stitches them together into a single three-by-three grid so you can show the world all the amazing pics you snapped this year. Though, it doesn't pull from reels or stories, so maybe a top-nine doesn't mean as much as it once did, but it still makes for a pretty, shareable nugget for your timeline.
What Is Instagram Top Nine?
Top Nine is an app that pulls in your top nine Instagram posts (not stories or reels) of the year. It defines "top" as the ones that got the most likes. You drop in your account—don't share your password—and it plops out a three-by-three grid of the nine most-liked images you posted over the last year.
That image is, of course, ready to share. Though, you don't have to share it. You can store it away like a little treasure that only you know exists. You're in charge.
Top Nine, it should be noted, is a specific app. It is one of many that do the same thing. Top Nine is popular because it has been around since 2016, and it does not require you to give over your password. For your security, you probably shouldn't use any app like this if it requires that you enter your Instagram password. You also shouldn't have to grant any app special permissions to get your image. That may be a sign that your data is being compromised.
How to Get Your Instagram Top Nine
The routine changes a bit year to year, but it is almost always remarkably straightforward and, importantly, free. One way to get it is to head to the Top Nine website. You'll find a field asking for your Instagram username. Drop it in there and it'll spit out your nine-picture grid.
Top Nine also has an app available through the Apple Store. The web version does not offer a clean download of your grid, but you can get that through the app. This year, the app is also offering a few different templates as well. It is recommended by Top Nine that you click a direct link to its app (provided above or on its website) because there are many other apps it says imitate what it does, but have significant security risks, which it highlighted in an extensive post earlier in December. Unfortunately, Top Nine does not offer an app for Android.
That's all there is to it. If you prefer to use Best Nine, another service doing the same thing, the process on its website is almost exactly the same. In my experience, Top Nine loaded my grid much faster.
However, any site making a #TopNine image for the year gets heavy traffic in the last week of the year. So, it may take a while before your image loads. You'll have to exercise a little patience before you can tell the whole world about the awesome trips and outfits that accented your 2022.