Getting started with Reel Mind
Reel Mind turns the Reels you share with it into a library you can actually search. This page covers the whole thing: connecting, sharing, finding something again, fixing a wrong category, and deleting everything if you want out. Ten minutes end to end, and most of that is reading.
What it is for
Most people have hundreds of saved Reels and can find none of them. The save button records that you liked something; it does not record what it was, why you kept it, or what you meant to do with it. Six months later you are scrolling a wall of thumbnails trying to recognise a video by its first frame. Reel Mind fills in the part Instagram leaves out: it writes down what was said and shown in each Reel, files it under a topic, and lets you find it again by typing half a phrase you half remember.
Before you start
You need an Instagram account and about two minutes. There is nothing to install. You are not handing over your Instagram password either — you pick a fresh username and password for Reel Mind itself when you sign up. Both are yours to choose, so treat that password the way you would any other, which includes not leaving it sitting in a chat once setup is done.
Setting it up
Create your account here
Sign up on this site and pick a username and a password. These are your Reel Mind details — not your Instagram ones, and you are never asked for your Instagram password at any point.
Link your Instagram
From the Instagram account you will be sharing from, send the bot a direct message reading: connect <your_username> <your_password>, using the details from step 1. That message is what tells the bot which library your Reels belong in. No confirmation comes back — that is normal, not a failure.
Share a Reel to check it worked
Send the bot any public Reel the way you would send it to a friend — the share arrow, then the bot. If it turns up in your library, the link is working. If nothing turns up, the connect message did not land; send it again and check the spelling.
Unsend the connect message
Once a Reel has arrived, go back and unsend the connect message. Your password is sitting in a chat until you do. Nothing breaks — the link is already made, and Reels you share afterwards keep landing in the same library.
Unsend the connect message afterwards
Your password is now sitting in a chat, in plain text, and Instagram keeps chats forever. Anyone who picks up your unlocked phone, or reads over your shoulder while your inbox is open, can see it. Hand your phone to a friend to show them something and the message is one tap away. So once a shared Reel has shown up in your library, go back to that chat, press and hold the connect message, and choose Unsend. It disappears from the conversation on both sides.
Nothing breaks when you do. That message is only an introduction: the link between your Instagram and your library is made the moment it is read, and deleting it afterwards does not undo it. Reels you share keep landing in the same place, and you sign in on the web exactly as before. If you ever need to link a different Instagram account, you just send the message again — and unsend it again.
The direct message is the strangest part of the setup, and it is not decoration: a Reel shared in a DM arrives with no way of knowing which browser account it belongs to, so that first message is what binds the two together. The about page goes into why in more detail.
Finding something again
Search covers what was spoken in the Reel, the text printed on the video, and the caption, so you are not limited to the words a creator chose to type. A few things that help:
- Search the phrase you remember hearing, not the topic. People remember “you don’t need to soak them first” far better than they remember “cooking”.
- Two or three distinctive words beat a full sentence. Transcripts are rarely word for word, so the shorter and odder your search, the better it lands.
- If nothing matches, narrow by category and scan instead. A category holds tens of Reels, not hundreds — recognising one by sight is quick at that scale.
- Still nothing? The Reel may have had no speech and no on-screen text at all. Those are findable by caption alone.
Categories
Every Reel is filed under a topic automatically. The suggested topics are broad on purpose — a category with three Reels in it is a category you will never open. When the default set does not match how you think, make your own: a category named try this weekend or send to Priya is a perfectly good category, and usually a more useful one than Technology.
Recategorising takes one action from the Reel’s card, and nothing is destroyed when you do it — the transcript and the on-screen text stay attached either way. If you are not sure how to split your library up, organising by intent rather than by topic is the approach most people end up at.
When something goes wrong
Nothing came back after I sent the connect message
Nothing is meant to. The bot does not reply to that message, so silence tells you neither that it worked nor that it failed — share a Reel and see whether it appears in your library. That is the only confirmation there is.
I shared a Reel and nothing arrived, so the link failed
Almost always a typo. It is three parts: connect, then your Reel Mind username, then your Reel Mind password, separated by single spaces — no email, no Instagram password, no extra punctuation. Send it again exactly like that, then try one more Reel. If it still does not land, the contact page will get you a human.
I unsent the connect message — am I still connected?
Yes. The message does the introduction and nothing after that, so removing it changes nothing about your account. Unsending it is the right move: it takes your password out of a chat history that anyone holding your unlocked phone can scroll.
I shared a Reel and it is not in my library
Reels from private accounts you do not follow cannot be opened, and neither can anything already deleted. If it was a public Reel and it is genuinely missing, share it once more — a repeat share is not a duplicate, it just retries.
The category is wrong
It is a guess, and guesses miss. Move the Reel to a different category from its card, or make a category of your own that matches how you actually think. Your own categories always win over the suggested ones.
The transcript is empty or garbled
Silent Reels have nothing to transcribe. Loud background music, strong accents and very fast speech all reduce accuracy. The Reel is still saved, and still findable by its caption and its on-screen text.
A Reel I saved months ago is now blank
Reel Mind stores a link back to the original Instagram post rather than a copy of the video, so if the creator deletes the Reel or makes their account private, the link stops working. What you saved about it — the transcript, the category, the text — stays.
Your data, and how to remove it
Your library is private. The public Explore page never shows your username or ties a Reel back to you, and you can ask to be kept out of it entirely. If you want to leave, ask for the account to be closed and the Reels saved against it go with it. If you made a Reel that appears on the site and you want it gone, you do not need an account to say so.
Each of those has its own option on the contact page, and the full detail of what is collected and why is in the privacy policy.
Still stuck?
Reel Mind is built and run by one person, and questions are usually answered within two or three working days. Say what you did and what happened instead — it saves a round trip.
Contact support