Most of PinSuite works without installing anything. Paste a board's link on your dashboard and it saves. The extension exists for the boards that method cannot reach: your own private and secret ones. This page is the step-by-step guide; the extension overview has the short version.
Safari: coming soon to the Mac App Store. Until then, Chrome or Firefox on your Mac works the same way. Edge, Brave and Arc install the Chrome version.
Why a private board needs it
When you paste a link, PinSuite fetches that board from Pinterest the same way any visitor would. Pinterest only shows private and secret boards to the person signed in as you, so there is nothing for PinSuite to read.
The extension solves that by working from inside your own browser session. It reads the board as you, while you are signed in, and sends the results to your library. Your Pinterest password is never involved and the board's visibility never changes.
That is the whole reason it exists. If all your boards are public, you do not need it.
Installing it
Click the Chrome or Firefox button above and confirm the install. That is the entire setup. There is no connection code to copy and no key to paste.
As long as you are signed in to pinsuite.app in the same browser, the extension finds your account by itself the first time you open it.
Saving a private board
Open the board on Pinterest
Signed in as normal. Private and secret boards are fine.
Click the PinSuite icon
The side panel opens and fills in the board's address for you. You can also paste any Pinterest or Instagram link into the box, which helps when the board is not the tab you are looking at.
Press Start stashing
Sections are kept as sections. A board organised into kitchen, bathroom and living room arrives with those groupings intact rather than flattened into one pile.
Large boards keep importing in the background. You can close the panel and carry on. Keep the browser open, though: the extension fetches the board through your browser, so quitting the browser stops the import. If that happens, open the board and press Start stashing again. Pins that were already saved are not added twice.
Saving one image from anywhere
The extension also adds a right-click option on every site, not only Pinterest. Right-click any image and choose Save to PinSuite. It goes straight to your library, with the page it came from recorded as the source, so you can find your way back to the original later. No downloading to your computer and uploading again.
A short confirmation appears in the corner of the page so you know it worked.
A note about video
Videos inside a Pinterest or Instagram board save normally. They come in with the board, at full quality, like everything else.
Right-clicking a video usually will not work, and that is worth understanding rather than filing as a bug. Most video on the web is streamed in small pieces rather than stored as one file, so there is no single file at that address to save. Recipe sites, news sites and Pinterest's own player all work this way. When you right-click one, the extension tells you so instead of failing quietly.
To save a video, use the board or pin link rather than the right-click menu.
The same panel takes Instagram links. Save a single post, a reel, or fan out a whole profile, and it lands in the same library beside your Pinterest boards rather than in a separate tool.
For a profile, this browser needs to be signed in to Instagram, and an import stops after 96 posts, so a large account will not come across whole. If Instagram starts refusing requests part-way through, the extension keeps what it has and waits 15 minutes before it will start another profile import.
Where your saves go
Everything goes to your PinSuite library, not to your Downloads folder. That is deliberate: a library can be searched, tagged, organised into boards and exported in several formats, which a folder of files cannot.
When you do want files on your computer, export any board or your whole account as a ZIP, PDF, HTML gallery, CSV or JSON.
What it costs
The free plan includes 25 saves and needs no card. Paid plans start at $6.99 a month or $49 a year. Anything you have already saved stays yours, including if you move back to the free plan later.
Privacy
The extension never sees or stores your Pinterest password. It reads the board using the session already in your browser, which is exactly what lets it reach private boards without anything being made public.
It reads the address of the tab you are on, so it can fill in a board link for you and record where a saved image came from. Nothing about your browsing is sent anywhere unless you save something. On Chrome it asks for access to Pinterest, Instagram, their image servers and pinsuite.app, six addresses in total. The Firefox add-on asks for access to all sites instead. Either way, nothing leaves your browser until you save something.
If something is not working
A save says you are out of free saves. The free plan is 25 items in total, not per board. The panel links straight to your subscription page.
A board saves fewer pins than Pinterest claims. Pinterest's own pin counts include pins it will not serve, so a small shortfall is normal and not lost content.
The panel has said Connecting... for ages. That is the only status the panel shows while a save runs, so on a big board it stays there for as long as the import takes. Look for the board on your library page before assuming it failed.