Customer-supplied: paste your OWN Instagram cookies from a logged-in browser session (DevTools → Application → Cookies → instagram.com). Accepts multiple formats: (1) Standard: sessionid=XXX; csrftoken=XXX; ds_user_id=XXX (2) JSON object: {"sessionid":"XXX","csrftoken":"XXX"} (3) JSON array: [{"name":"sessionid","value":"XXX"}] (4) Raw sessionid value. Must include a valid sessionid — cookies without it are rejected at pre-flight with NO billing (secret values are masked in the error preview).
REQUIRED for: Comments Scraper, Search Scraper. Optional for: Profile, Post, Reels, Hashtag, Tagged, Followers Count, Data Extractor, all-in-one — these run anonymously by default for safer behavior; supplying cookies here unlocks +6 enhanced fields (avgLikes, avgComments, engagementRate, businessEmail, businessPhoneNumber, pronouns) and exact like/comment counts on posts/reels of any age via the shortcode→PK mobile-API path, plus owner details, dimensions, accessibility caption, tagged users, location, carousel images, video URLs/duration, reel plays/shares/saves/audio, hashtag topPosts, real tagged media feed, and search follower-count enrichment.
Important: this actor does NOT include any Instagram cookies for customer runs. When a mode requires authentication, you must paste your own cookies into this field. There is no shared cookie pool, no built-in fallback, and no operator-side cookie injection — every authenticated run uses the cookies you provide, attributing the activity to your Instagram account. (Operator daily-tests use the same loginCookies input field, with cookies passed by the daily-test orchestrator.)
🛡️ Comments and Search modes run a 2-second cookie-health probe before any work — if the cookie is expired, the run aborts with an input_validation_error dataset item and is NOT billed. No wasted minutes on dead sessions.
