If you’re trying to keep things private while using Instagram, then Stories are not your friend.
When you open a person’s story – they’ll get notified that you’ve watched it even if the two of you aren’t friends or following each other.
Thankfully, there are a few different ways to sleuth your way through a Story without your interest being detected.
And these work whether or not you’re using Instagram on an iPhone or an Android device.
The most obvious of which is the tried-and-tested method of flight mode.
Here’s how to do it: open Instagram, so the app loads the latest Stories onto your phone. Then, pull down the notification panel from the top of the screen and flip on flight mode.
You can then safely view all the Stories anonymously. Just remember that you’ll need to close the app before switching your phone out of flight mode.
Secondly, you could opt for an entirely different account. Providing you’ve got the email addresses, you can have multiple accounts. The only thing is you’ll need to be friends with the person to see their Stories if their account is set to private.
And some people won’t just accept invitations from random accounts they don’t know.
Instagram lets you switch between accounts pretty easily, so this could be an option.
Finally, you could look at one of the number of sites out there designed to let you browse Stories anonymously.
Again, the caveat here is that these only work if the account is set to public.
Sites such as AnonIGViewer and StoriesDown will both show you Instagram Stories anonymously without having to log in to the app.
These sites will also let you look at a number of recent posts without having to log in.
No more DMs
If you do want to be open about the Stories you’re viewing, you can now also send a simple ‘Like’ that won’t result in the person receiving a DM.
Previously, any response you sent to someone about a Story, whether it was a reaction emoji or a full-on message, would land in their inbox.
Now Instagram just lets you like a Story to show your appreciation.
‘So now, as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon,’ explained Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, back in February.
Will Instagram notify the person if I screenshot or save their post?
At the moment, Instagram does not notify users if someone has taken screenshots of (or saved) their posts, stories, reels, or permanent DM conversations.
This is also the case if you take a screen recording of a user’s post, allowing you to creep in peace.
If someone has a business or creator account, then Instagram will let them know how many people have saved their post – but not the individual users.
However, Instagram will notify someone if a screenshot has been taken of a disappearing picture or video sent in a private DM.
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