How to Follow A Private Instagram Account Without Requesting

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View private Instagram account

Maybe you’re trying to spy on them because you want to find out some information, or maybe you’re just trying to see their pictures, but you know they’re not going to accept you.

Unfortunately, from the get-go, Instagram wanted to give their users an option to make their accounts private because they cared about their user’s privacy. Most social media platforms have options where you can make your account more private than it is such as Facebook and Twitter.

With private Instagram accounts, other users aren’t able to see who follows you, or who you’re following. They also aren’t able to see your posts, and who’s interacted with them. They can only see your profile picture, how many posts, followers, and people you’re following.

How to Follow a Private Account Without Requesting

 

Unfortunately, there’s no way to follow someone’s Instagram account without requesting them first. With private accounts, the privacy barrier can only be bypassed when the owner of the account accepts your follow request. For them to accept your follow request to view their account, you first have to follow them to request them. So no, you can follow a private account without requesting.

If you want to look at someone’s private account without requesting, so you can look at their follows, or posts, you need to get a friend to follow the private account so you can see their followers from their phone. If the friend is already following them, you can simply tell them the reason why you want to check the private account and they’ll happily let you view it.

If you do decide to request someone, there’s a chance that they could decline your follow request. Luckily, there are ways to know if someone deletes your request.

Since you can’t follow someone without requesting, if you want to see someone’s followers on their private Instagram, you have to go through another means of viewing their account without following them from your account. Even if you don’t have an account, you can still see someone’s followers on their private account using various methods.

With these methods, you’ll still be able to follow their private account without requesting from your main account. From here, you’ll be able to check the followers of their private accounts, along with who they follow, their posts, etc.

Tip: If you don’t want to request someone because you don’t even have an account, there are ways to view profiles without an account.

1. Using Zenomod

There’s a method using Zeno mod that allows you to download isntagram++ then from here, it unlocks profiles for you after you’ve completed a few tasks on the app.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Turn Off Low Power Mode and Background App Refesh.
  3. Open Safari and go to Zenomod.com.
  4. Search for Instagram and click Install. It’s going to take a while to download.
  5. Open Settings and click Profile Download.
  6. Tap Install in the upper right corner and enter your passcode.
  7. Tap install again and wait for Instagram ++ to install.
  8. Open the app and complete the tasks that it asks you to at the top. Once you’re done, you should be able to view an Instagram profile without requesting.

2. Make Another Instagram Account

The first way you can try and see a private Instagram account’s followers without following the owner is by making another burner account. When you make a burner account, this means that you won’t have to use your real account to follow the private account.

When making the burner account here’s what you need to do:

  • Add up to 5 pictures
  • Gain a few followers
  • Make your account private
  • Make your profile picture attractive

Make sure you use pictures that look genuine. You could take them off someone else’s profile but make sure it looks like someone they would know. Try using a gender opposite to them as they’re more likely to accept.

When you gain followers, make sure that you’re also following a few accounts, so you look like a real account.

Once you’ve followed and have received followers, you’ll need to make your account private and add an attractive profile picture. This is going to increase your odds of being followed by a huge amount because it sparks curiosity. After you’ve done this, you should request to follow them, and chances are that they’re going to accept your request. From here, you can see their followers and you did this without following with your main account.

3. View Their Profile From A Friends Account

Since you don’t want to follow this person to see their follows or they’re not accepting your request, the next thing you could do would be to ask a friend to follow them. If they’re already following this person, this would be even better because they don’t have to go through the process of waiting for them to accept.

You can simply ask that friend to view the person’s account from their account and this shouldn’t be a problem. It’s a much quicker and easier alternative than making a burning account to follow the person.

From here, you can view their account without needing an account yourself to request them. And you can snoop from their follows to get the low down.

4. Send the Person a Private Message

Message the private account

If this person isn’t accepting your follow request, the next best step to take would be to message them privately asking if they could accept your request.

This would be a good step to take if you know that they receive a lot of follow request and they have a relatively popular Instagram account.

For example, if someone requests me, they don’t stay at the top of the list.

Instagram follow requests

They are scattered in the list of requests I have, so I don’t know which one is the most recent. This means that the person you’re trying to follow may have not seen your request yet. Messaging them asking them to accept your request increases your odds by a lot.

This is handy if you don’t mind requesting them, but they’re just not accepting your request. If you don’t want to request them at all, then this isn’t a good way to look at their followers or follow their private account without an account.

5. Wait For Them To Take Their Account Off Private

If you want to view their account without having to send them a follow request, you can just wait till they take their account off private. Most people who put their account on private will take it off private one day so you can check their account regularly and wait till that day comes. If you check their account every few days or every week them this will ensure that you catch their account when it’s off private so they don’t put it back on private again.

6. Check What Their Friends Put On Their Story

If they post a lot on their story and you have their friend on Instagram, if their friend every shares what they put on their story, this will allow you to see a small aspect of their account without having to send a request. When the friend gets tagged in their story, they’re able to post it to their story if they have the setting enabled in settings and this will allow you to see it on their story.

7. Send a Follow Request

Rather than trying to view their account without requesting them, you can just be patient and request them. To get accepted, you’ll need a lot of patience and you’ll need to be able to interact with them so they’re more inclined to actually accept your follow request.

When you send them a follow request, you want to be nice about it and wait till they respond. If you have mutual followers with this person, then it won’t take them much time to respond to it because you guys have something in common. Once they accept your follow request, you’ll be able to see their photos, videos, and followers if you want to.

The trickiest thing to do when you’ve requested someone is to wait for them to accept your request. This takes a lot of patience. For some people, it takes them a while before they accept someone’s request on Instagram. So when you’ve sent the request, then you need to wait just in case they are the type of person that takes a long time to respond.

Some people might not accept requests from people that they don’t know personally. If you think this is the case for this person, then you should send them a direct message to let them know about your interest in them accepting your follow request. If you’ve met them before, just message them talking about the event you were at. If you weren’t then just give them a genuine reason why they should accept your follow request.

If you know this person and you feel like they haven’t seen your follow request by accident, then you can just send them a DM reminding them. You can simply start the message like hey, then remind them of where you say them or met them. In most cases, if they do remember you, then they’ll accept your friend request.

If they respond to you and accept your request eventually, then you should check out their profile and interact with them. Keeping it genuine, you can comment if appropriate, or just like a few pictures. Another great way to be accepted by them is to leave your account open so they can see your pics. This means that if your username isn’t very recognizable but your pictures are, then they’ll accept your request quicker.

How Can Someone Follow Me on Instagram If My Account is Private

Once you make your account private, in order for people to follow you, they’ll need to send you a follow request and this will allow them to see your posts, followers, and following list. You’ll be able to see their request in the following request section – this is where you can see stuff like who’s liked and commented on your post, or who’s followed you.

Before they can follow your private account, they’ll have to find it. Because your account is private, it’s less discoverable but this doesn’t mean people can’t find you and request you. They can find you through search, through someone’s following list, suggest, a tag, and if they’ve found you on their contacts list.

Private Instagram Viewer

If you’re desperate to view someone’s account without following them, you might be tempered to use a private Instagram viewer. However, these viewers aren’t exactly how they appear and they’re very misleading.

Don’t Use a ‘Private Instagram Viewer’

There are many tools on the web that ‘allow you to view people’s private Instagram accounts’ but you’d be quite naïve to believe this. All websites that claim to do this can’t do this and they will ask you to fill out some sort of survey before you can see people’s accounts but after doing so, you still can’t view them.

The whole point of private accounts is to make sure that the user has privacy and control over who can see their picture. There’s no way Instagram would give other people the control to be able to view other people’s private accounts and create a tool and publish it on the web for others to use.

How to Follow Someone on Instagram If Their Account is Private

If you want to follow someone on Instagram and their account is private, you need to send them a follow request so that they can accept it and then you’ll be able to see what they post. Following a private account on Instagram is very similar to following a public account, except you’ll need to wait for the private account to accept your follow request unless you’ll be unable to see their account.
 
To follow someone on Instagram if their account is private:
  1. Open the Instagram app.
  2. Tap on the search tab (magnifying glass).
  3. Type the name or username of the person you want to follow.
  4. Tap the result that matches who you’re looking for.
  5. Press the “Follow” button.
  6. Wait for them to accept your request. Once you’ve been accepted, you can now view their posts, their following and followers list, as well as message them.

When you send them a follow request, you want to be nice about it and wait till they respond. If you have mutual followers with this person, then it won’t take them much time to respond to it because you guys have something in common. Once they accept your follow request, you’ll be able to see their photos, videos, and followers if you want to.

The trickiest thing to do when you’ve requested someone is to wait for them to accept your request. This takes a lot of patience. For some people, it takes them a while before they accept someone’s request on Instagram. So when you’ve sent the request, then you need to wait just in case they are the type of person that takes a long time to respond.

What Happens When You Request to Follow a Private Account on Instagram

When your request to follow a private Instagram account, if you’ve never had a private Instagram account yourself, you may be wondering what happens when you follow a private Instagram account. The only thing that happens when you follow a private Instagram account is that they get a request in the notifications section saying that you want to follow them.

This request will have the words confirm or delete next to them and they’ll be able to confirm whether they want you to follow them or delete your request.

If they need to delete your request, then to follow them again, you’ll have to send them another request. If they do accept your request, then you’ll be able to see their account. Apart from this, nothing else happens when you follow a private Instagram account.

They simply just get a notification saying that they’ve requested to follow you. When you tap the follow button, it’ll say requested then once they accept you, it’ll change to following.

Why Instagram Gave Users The Option To Go Private

The first reason why there are private accounts is that the owner of the account can choose who follows them. They can do this by accepting who they want to follow them and rejecting who they don’t want to follow them.

The second reason why people make their account private is that they want to build a sense of mystery, so they can receive more follow requests. You’ll mainly see meme pages do this so that you’re intrigued to see the type of content they upload.

A lot of Instagram admins who own pages with a large number of followers swear that they gain a lot more followers by putting their account on private.

Reid Hailey, the founder of Doing Things, a media company that manages a network of Instagram pages with a collective 14 million followers, says that before one of his large accounts went private, it was growing at an average of 10,000 new followers per week. Once it flipped to private, that number jumped to 100,000.

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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