Accidentally Viewed Facebook Story? Will They Know?

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How to View Facebook Stories Anonymously

Can Someone See That I Viewed Their Facebook Story If We Are Not Friends

If you’re not friends or you don’t follow each other on Facebook, if you view the story they posted, they’ll have no way of telling you that it was you. Facebook won’t tell them that you viewed their story so they’ll have no idea that you watched it.

Your view is anonymous so you can watch their story as many times as you want without them finding out. Even if you do follow them and they follow you, they’ll still have no way of knowing that you viewed their Facebook story.

Can You View Facebook Story Without Being Seen?

There are plenty of ways that you can watch people’s Facebook stories without your name ever showing up in their viewer’s list. They will have no idea that you viewed their story because you won’t be directly clicking their story, therefore Facebook won’t register it as a view. The methods used to achieve this are never recognized by Facebook as a view so there’s nothing to worry about.

How to View Facebook Story Without Being Seen

If you’ve accidentally watched someone’s story and you don’t want them to know you’ve watched it, this can leave you in an awkward situation. Or you may be eager to view someone’s story, but you don’t want them to know.

When you view someone’s story, your name comes up in a list of people that have viewed their story. To view a story without them knowing, you’ll either have to remove yourself from the list, or not come up on the list in the first place.

1. Airplane Mode

 

The first way to view Facebook stories without being seen is by putting your phone on Airplane mode. When your phone is on airplane mode, your device won’t be connected to the internet, so Facebook won’t be able to register that you’ve viewed someone’s story.

Once your phone is on airplane mode, then you need to refresh your Facebook feed. Once refreshed, tap on the story and watch it. You can now turn your phone off airplane mode and the person won’t be able to tell that you watched their story.

You can now turn your phone off airplane mode and the person won’t be able to tell that you watched their story. Before you take your phone off airplane mode, made sure you’ve closed the Facebook app.

2. Half Swiping

On the story before the person’s story, you want to view without them knowing, you can half swipe. This is when you swipe right from the previous story onto the next story without letting go. This means that you’re still one story whilst viewing the next one. But because you haven’t let go of your fingers, Facebook can’t register a view on that person’s story since you haven’t fully committed to watching it.

3. Use Another Account

If you have a burner account that has no traces to your identity, you can use this to watch people’s IG stories and they’ll never be able to tell it was you. If their account is public, then using your burner account is easy and you’ll be able to view their stories anytime. But if their account is private, then you’ll have to be friends with them in order to view their IG stories anonymously.

The key to this is that there can be absolutely nothing that links both your personal account and this burner account unless they could suspect that you’re the person behind the account. Another thing to realize here is that if they don’t have that many friends and they notice an unknown burner account is watching their stories without being friends with them, this can lead them to block since they know that someone is stalking them

4. Blocking Them

If you’ve already viewed their story but you don’t want your name to come up on the list, then you can block them. Once the 24 hours are up, you can unblock them and add them as a friend. But this will be awkward. Once their blocked, your profile will be removed from the list of people who viewed their stories.

5. Deactivate your account

Another way to do this without having to block them and add them again is to deactivate your account until the story is deleted. Your name will be removed from the list of people who viewed the profile because your profile has been temporarily deleted from Facebook. Once the story has been deleted, you can log into your Facebook account.

Note: if you try to log back in before their story has been deleted, then your profile will still be visible on the list of people who have viewed it.

6. Watch Them In The Last Minute

Another way to watch someone’s Facebook story without them knowing is to watch the story when it’s about to expire. To know when it was uploaded, you need to look at how long the story has been uploaded for then calculate how many hours it’s got left by taking it away from 24.

To check how long it’s been up for and to make sure you don’t click the story, you can use the half swipe method detailed above. Once you know the hour the story will expire, then you can watch it. Watching it this late means that they’re less likely to check who viewed their story which means that they won’t see your name on the list. The later you leave it, the better the chance you have of them not seeing your username on the list.

7. Ask Someone To Send It To You And View The Thumbnail

If someone you know is friends with this person and they can comfortably view their story, you can get them to send it to you and you just view the thumbnail in messenger without clicking it so you’re not in the list of people who viewed it.

This only works well for photos and not videos. You can take this further by asking them to take a screenshot or screen record their story so that you view the full thing without them ever knowing.

This is one of the best ways to watch someone’s story without them knowing, but the downside is you have to ask someone who’s friends with them to do this. You could risk coming off like a weirdo, so it’s best to ask someone you’re super close with so there’s less judgment.

8. Ask Someone What Was On Their Story

You can ask someone what was on someone’s story so that you don’t have to view it yourself. You could simply phrase it as that you think they blocked you from watching their story, so if they could tell you watch they put on their story, it would be much appreciated.

If this is how it’s phrased, then the chances that they’ll let you know what the person posted is high. This only works if you know someone that also friends with this person. If their account is private and you don’t know anyone that is friends with them, then you’ll have to use another method to ask them.

9. Watch Their Highlights After

If you wait till their story expires and they turn it into a highlight, then this will allow you to watch their story without them knowing since your name won’t appear on the list of people who viewed the story. When doing this, you’ll have to bank on the fact that they’ll turn their story into a highlight. If they don’t do so, then you would’ve missed the chance to watch their story.

When someone puts their previous story as a highlight, they’re not able to see the list of people that viewed the story or go to view the story in the future. The only time that they’re able to see who viewed their story is only when the story is live. They won’t know that you watched their story if you watch it in the highlight after.

10. Watch It If Someone Posted It To Their Story

If they’ve mentioned someone on that story and they’ve enabled others to add their story to their own stories in settings, then you’ll be able to see this person’s story on the person they mentioned story. For you to be comfortable viewing the other person’s story, there must be something that puts you off watching the original story.

It may be an ex you’re avoiding or someone that you don’t want to gain satisfaction from the fact that you watch their story. Bear in mind that you’ll only be able to watch someone’s story off someone else’s if they’ve been mentioned and have been able to add it to their story. In most cases, people aren’t mentioned which is what makes using this method a rare case scenario.

Accidentally Viewed Someone’s Facebook Story?

After avoiding someone’s story, accidentally watching it one day accidentally can bring you to sweats. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to avoid someone knowing that you’ve watched their story if you know your name is under the list of people who viewed it. The quicker you act in this situation, the better off you are. If you take a long time to act, then the higher your risk them seeing your name in the list of people who viewed their story.

Block Them

If you block someone, then your name will come off the list of people who viewed their story. This means that if you did view their story, you’ve now been able to without them knowing. The downside of blocking someone is that you’ll have to request them again if you want to be friends. Going through this process can be more embarrassing than watching the stories that you’ve been avoiding.

If You’re Worried, You Can Deactivate Your Account

If you’re worried that your username is in the list of people that viewed their story, then you can deactivate your account just to make sure that it’s not there. This means that you won’t have to block them and you won’t face the embarrassment of requesting them back if you want to.

Deactivating your account is the best thing to do because it doesn’t give the person the idea that you saw their story. Whereas blocking, you have to do the whole dead of requesting them back again etc. If you don’t want this to be the case, then you’ll have to go through the deactivation process which might not be appealing to you with one of the downsides being a long time away from Facebook.

Delete Your Account

If you really don’t care about your account, you can go to the extremes of deleting your account after watching someone’s story. If you do opt for this, you’ll have the option to recover your account within 30 days. Although there’s an option to do this, it’s the last thing you want to opt for. Your best bet is to deactivate your account for a bit.

David Johnson is a freelance writer with 9 years of experience writing for Techzillo and other established tech outlets like iMore. His focus and key interests are Apple and accessibility as well as consumer technology in general. Read our Editorial Guidlines and Fact Checking process.

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