Everyone in the tech world is too obsessed with productivity these days. Day after day, somebody always seems to post about their "ai-led study app" or their "ultra-productive ai-workflows". Clearly, everyone is too productive these days!! Thus, I volunteered to balance things out.

This is why I made reels-cli. This project allows you to watch Instagram reels within your terminal, right where developers do their hardest work, making them less productive. No need to spend the extra two seconds to open a chrome tab! Even better, it plays videos directly from your personal instagram algorithm!

Built with C and Python. Special shoutout to notcurses and instagrapi for their amazing libraries.

Yes, this project does work. It plays videos directly from your Instagram algorithm (explore page, though). There is even audio and video playback as well!

The controls are simple:

• q to quit
• Space to pause/play
• Up/Down to scroll

That's it!

Take a look at instagram-cli! Use instagram right in your terminal without, completely free from brainrot and into the true ultimate productivity tool. Plus, their CLI actually works and is easy to set up! Just pip install instagram-cli and you're good to go.

• Linux operating system (tested on Ubuntu 24.04, WSL2)
• GCC compiler with C99 support
• Python 3.8+ with pip
• Git for cloning the repository

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd reels-cli

2. Install system dependencies:

   Ubuntu/Debian:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install build-essential python3 python3-pip python3-venv \
                        libnotcurses-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev \
                        libavutil-dev libswscale-dev libswresample-dev libao-dev

3. Set up Python environment:

   cd python
   python3 -m venv .venv
   source .venv/bin/activate
   pip install -r requirements.txt
   cd ..

4. Build the C application:

   cd c
   make
   cd ..

5. Configure Instagram credentials: Edit python/main.py and replace the placeholder credentials:

   USERNAME = "your_instagram_username"
   PASSWORD = "your_instagram_password"

6. Make the launcher globally accessible (optional): Run this in the reels-cli directory:

   sudo ln -sf "$(pwd)/run.sh" /usr/local/bin/reels-cli

   This allows you to run reels-cli from anywhere.

If you installed globally:

reels-cli

Or run directly:

./run.sh

The Makefile provides several build targets:

• Standard build: make (optimized for performance)
• Performance build: make performance (maximum optimizations)
• Clean build: make clean (remove build artifacts)

• libnotcurses-core and libnotcurses (terminal graphics)
• libavformat, libavcodec, libavutil (FFmpeg video processing)
• libswscale, libswresample (FFmpeg scaling and resampling)
• libao (audio output)
• pthread (threading support)

• instagrapi==2.1.5 (Instagram API client)

The application consists of two main components:

1. C Video Player (c/ directory):

   • Built with notcurses for terminal graphics
   • Uses FFmpeg for video/audio processing
   • Communicates with Python client via Unix Domain Socket (UDS)
   • Handles video playback, user input, and terminal rendering

2. Python Instagram Client (python/ directory):

   • Uses instagrapi to fetch Instagram reels
   • Communicates with C player via UDS
   • Handles Instagram authentication and API calls
   • Communicates video URLs to the C player

There are many points of failure, particularly involved with audio and video playback. You can use tools like mpv and ffplay to test video and audio playback from URLs directly to ensure your system is configured correctly.

Look into python/logs for any errors with Instagram login or fetching reels.

My setup for reference:

• WSL2 on Windows 11, WSL version 2.4.12
• Ubuntu 24.04
• Windows Terminal Version 1.22.12111.0
• gcc 13.3.0
• python3 3.12.3
• build-essential 12.10ubuntu1
• python3 3.12.3-0ubuntu2
• python3-pip 24.0+dfsg-1ubuntu1.2
• libnotcurses-dev 3.0.7+dfsg.1-1ubuntu5
• libavformat-dev 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5
• libavcodec-dev 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5
• libavutil-dev 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5
• libswscale-dev 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5
• libswresample-dev 7:6.1.1-3ubuntu5
• libao-dev 1.2.2+20180113-1.1ubuntu4

This project has many potential points of failures. If Instagram updates their API, the instagrapi library may break. Additionally, audio and video playback can be tricky depending on your system configuration.

Depending on your system specifications and internet speeds, video playback may be choppy as well. This project was not built for performance, but rather as a fun experiment.

Here are some improvements and TODOs in order of importance:

• Audio likes to crackle a lot, this NEEDS to be fixed (but I have not much idea how)
• The performance of the video player is horrible (this is probably related to the audio issues)
• Login directly over command line arguments/environment variables rather than hardcoding in the script
• The code is a mess, needs a better file structure and refactoring
• Improve video playback performance (buffering, etc.)
• Video playback optimizations (caching, preloading videos, etc.)
• Implement better error handling and logging
• Simpler interface; log-in directly from the terminal interface
• Add support for more Instagram features (reading comments, commenting, liking, is definitely possible)

I probably won't be working on this project much more, especially as it was already quite out of my depth (the audio system is horrible and I have not much clue how it works).