How to View Someone’s Instagram Story Without them Knowing
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 know, 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 watch someone’s story without them knowing 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 Instagram won’t be able to register that you’ve viewed someone’s story. For this to work, you need to make sure that you’ve loaded all of your stories up before you put your device in Airplane mode. Once the story you want to watch without them knowing has loaded up, then you need to put your phone on airplane mode, 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. Before you take your phone off airplane mode, made sure you’ve closed the Instagram app.
2. Half Swiping
On the story before the person’s story you want to preview on Instagram without your name showing up in the list, 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, Instagram can’t register a view on that person’s story since you haven’t fully committed to watching it. This only works well when their story is a photo and not a video. if it’s a photo, you can pretty much see the whole thing without letting go of the screen. If it’s a video, you’ll only be able to see the thumbnail which means you’ll be unable watch the video unless you let go of your fingers. In this case, you’ll need to use another method that’ll allow you to watch videos because this only works well for photos.
3. Insta-stories.online
There are a ton of tools out there like Insta-stories.online that allow you to watch people’s stories anonymously and they’ll never know. Using this tool, you can enter anyone’s username and it’ll show you the stories they’ve uploaded in the last 24 hours. From here, you can download them and save them or you can simply watch them and your profile will never come up in their viewer’s list. The best part about using a story viewer tool is that you don’t need to download a third party app or even have an Instagram account in order to view their Stories. And if the account you’re trying to creep has blocked you, you’ll still be able to view and download their Stories. There are a ton of third-party tools on the market just like this one that will allow you to view people’s stories on Instagram without them knowing, even if they’ve blocked you. It’ll also allow you to save them, share them or repost them. To use them, you simply need to grab the persons username, then you need to paste it into the search bar of the story viewer. It’ll then pull up all of their stories that they’ve uploaded in the last 24 hours. The only downside to this is that it only works for public Instagram profiles. If you don’t follow a private account and you want to watch their stories with them knowing, then this won’t be possible using a story viewer tool for Instagram.
4. 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 follow them and be accepted 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 realise here is that if they don’t have that many followers and they notice an unknown burner account is watching their stories without following them, this can lead them to block since they know that someone is stalking them.
5. 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 is 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.
6. 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 off the list of people who viewed the profile because your profile has been temporarily deleted from Instagram. Once the story has been deleted, you can log into your Instagram 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.
7. Watch Them In The Last Minute
Another way to watch someone’s Instagram 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 stroy, you can use the half swipe method detailed above. Once you know the hour the story will expire, then you can watch it them. Watching it this late means that they’re less likely to check who viewed their stroy 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.
8. Ask Someone To Send It To You And View The Thumbnail
If someone you know follows this person and they can comfortably view their stroy, you can get them to send it to you and you just view the thumbnail in your DMs 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 view the full thing without them ever knowing. This is one of the best ways to watch someones story without them knowing, but the downside is you have to ask someone who follows 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.
9. Ask Someone What Was On Their Story
You can ask someone what was on someones 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 stroy, it would be much appreciated. If this is how it’s phrased, then chances that they’ll let you know what the person posted is high. This only works if you know someone that also follows this person. If their account is private and you don’t know anyone that follows them, then you’ll have to use another method to ask them.
10. Watch Their Highlights After
If you wait till their story expeires 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.
11. 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 persons story on the person they mentioned story. For you to be comfortable to view the other persons 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 off the fact that you watch their story. Bear in mind that you’ll only be able to watch someones 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.
If You Accidentally Watched It, Make Sure They Don’t Know
After avoiding someone’s story, accidently 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 you 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 follow them again if you want to. 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 following 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 following 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 the long time away from Instagram.
Delete Your Account
If you really don’t care about your account, you can go to the extremes of deleting your account after watching someones 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 if to deactivate your account for a bit.
