How To Tell Who Views Your Instagram
In the present era, our online presence has increased remarkably. This owes to the increasing social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Specifically, Instagram, which is predominantly a photo-sharing app lets people get an insight into our lives. Consequently, it is normal if you are wondering “how to see who viewed your Instagram.”
Can we possibly keep an eye on our profile views on Instagram?
Instagram provides a wide variety of ways by which one can express oneself, ranging from your basic profile picture to the various daily stories you post. It’s all there to describe and define your online presence. In this case, it is normal to get curious about who looks at your Instagram profile and how many times they do it.
But up till now, Instagram’s policies don’t allow people to know who visited their profile unless they like a picture or leave a comment. In the latter case, it just becomes plainly obvious that someone visited your profile.
Even with the different types of profile options, this kind of exposure has not been enabled. For example, if for Instagram business accounts you’ll get a statistical analysis of the number of views but no names would be mentioned.
Is it possible to see if anyone visits your Instagram profile?
As established at the moment the answer to the question “how to see who viewed your Instagram” is not as straightforward as you would prefer. Alternatively, a good way to keep an eye on the snoopers of your Instagram profile is to note the numbers of likes and comments on your content.
For example, a “Like” on a post from a while ago will signify that someone clicked your profile and scrolled down enough to access that picture and liked it.
Now even though your profile visits cannot be kept under surveillance, there is one thing that you can see the views for. Instagram allows you to see who viewed your Instagram story. Instagram stories stay on your profile for 24 hours. After this time duration, they vanish, but they do get saved in your archives.
The views on your Instagram story will only be visible for the 24 hours that the story stays on for but after that, only the number of views will be shown, not the names.
How to Keep an Eye on Who views your Instagram stories
Your Instagram stories are a good way to get an insight into how much traffic your content receives. Once you swipe right on your main home tab it will automatically open your camera.
You can use this camera to make videos or take pictures. You can even swipe up to upload pictures and videos directly from your phone.
Once you are satisfied with your post, you can post it by clicking on the “ your Story” icon present at the bottom right corner of your screen. Recently Instagram has come up with a close friends feature which is present besides the “your Story” option.
With this feature, you can easily restrict the viewers of your story. This feature is great in terms of privacy. The “close friends” feature doesn’t prevent you from viewing who viewed your Instagram stories.
Once you post the story, it will form a pink ring around your profile picture at the top of your screen. Click on it and swipe up to see exactly who has viewed your Instagram stories.
Keep in mind that the names of your viewers will only be visible for 24 hours, after this you will only see the number of views on your story.
Is there a third-party app that lets me see who views my Instagram profile?
Third parties sound promising when it comes to the question of “how to see who viewed your Instagram?” comes up. They claim to provide you with accurate data of who visited your profile on Instagram. A few of these apps include:
For iOs Users:
- Analyzer Plus
- Reports For Followers
- FollowMeter
For Android Users:
- InMyStalker
- InReports
Even though third-party apps sound like an easy solution to your query, it’s not as simple as you think. In fact, most of these applications are a hoax.
Instagram was acquired by Facebook in the year 2012, hence the policies for privacy are quite similar for them.
This means that just like Facebook, Instagram doesn’t allow a user to view profile visits. To further prove this here is a statement from the Chief Research and Development Officer from Security Scoreboard, Alex Heid.
“Anything advertising a feature that shows who viewed your profile would not be a legitimate service and should be avoided as it is likely just an app that is there to collect data for those who use it,”
The statement further proves the illegitimacy of third-party apps and the fakeness of their claims.
Additionally, these apps are either underdeveloped and look sketchy in appearance. They might ask you to pay to unlock the “see who viewed your Instagram profile” feature. Some might show you information that could easily be accessed by the Instagram app itself.
So the bottom line is that third-party apps are pretty useless when it comes to showing you profile viewers.
Checking Instagram Stories/Highlights to Check Traffic on Your Instagram Profile
Viewing your stalkers on Instagram might not be possible in a direct manner, but there is an indirect way to do this. This way includes utilizing your Instagram stories to keep a check.
Tap on your own profile picture on the top left corner of your Instagram Home Tab. This will take you to your own story. At the bottom left of your story tab, you’ll see the number of views on your story. Moreover, you will observe a few profile pictures as well. You can tap on this icon to view the number of people and the profiles of those who viewed your Instagram story.
Some other features also include the ability to hide people from watching your story. You can long tap on their icon and Instagram will open a small window with an option to hide people from your story.
Although it isn’t exactly what you must be looking for, it does bring you close to knowing who frequently keeps track of your online presence.
Converting to Business Accounts to Check Your Instagram Profile Viewers
Although it has been established that Instagram has well-restricted policies for normal Instagram accounts, you have the option to change the nature of your profile to access additional features.
Instagram has an option of shifting to a Business profile. The good thing is that this transition is absolutely free.
Once you shift to a Business account you can get better access to the traffic on your profile than a personal account. This shift will give you access to the gender, age, and even the location of your profile visitors. Moreover, it will inform you about their online timings.
Alas, it will still not give you access to the names of the above-mentioned visitors. Nonetheless, it still provides some sort of data on your viewers, hence bringing you one step closer to the answer to the question “how to see who viewed your Instagram?”
Now let’s look into the process of converting your regular Instagram profile to a Business account. This can be done by the following steps:
- Go to Instagram Settings
- Click on the icon stating “ Switch to Business Profile”
- Now link your profile to your Facebook page
- Add the required contact information that Instagram requires
These are the steps to generate a Business profile on Instagram to be able to access additional features that the app offers.
Making Your Account Private
If you’re one of those people who prefer their privacy over profile visits and like keeping a low profile, you might be interested in knowing how to make your account private.
Even though the likes and comments are a source of happiness and satisfaction it’s not always welcome. Now that we’ve talked about how to see who viewed your Instagram profile, let’s see how you can keep it private.
Some people prefer to give access to their Instagram life to only a few close people. For these users, Instagram has an optimum privacy setting.
You can do this by following these steps:
- Go to Instagram Settings
- Scroll to the “Private Account” option
- Enable this feature
An important thing to keep note of is that once you convert your Instagram profile to a private one your existing followers will still be present. In case you don’t want certain people following you, you can remove them from your profile individually.
You have two options in this regard. You can either unfollow certain people to stop viewing their content or you can remove them from your own followers. Both these options are independent of each other and are done separately.
- You can unfollow someone by going to their profile, click on the “following option”, select the “Unfollow” icon
You can Remove Followers, by going to your profile, clicking on “Followers”, then either searching or scrolling down to the people you want to kick out.
