You want to see someone’s Instagram story anonymously or without them knowing you saw it? Honey, join the club. Since their 2016 rollout, Instagram Stories have been a phenomenon. Users can post freely about their day, their interests, their thoughts, their outfits, their accomplishments, and more—without having to consider whether the information is worth going on the grid forever or the anxiety that comes with waiting for the public likes and comments to roll in. Stories disappear after 24 hours, so they’re just temporary bursts of information with no real drawback.
What they lack in public-facing stressors, they make up for in private ones: The poster of a Story can see everyone who looks at it, which is not true for grid posts. This in itself can be fraught. If your ex is posting on their Story a lot, you obviously want to know what they’re sharing, especially since you only have 24 hours to figure it out—but you don’t want them to know that you want to know!
Having your name appear on the list of viewers isn’t always desirable, but it can be avoided, with varying degrees of success. Yes, you can see their Story without being seen. Here are a few ways.
First: What doesn’t work for viewing an Instagram Story secretly
For a long time, my favorite, tried-and-true method to see a Story anonymously involved viewing the Story and then immediately blocking the person, which used to nuke your name from the viewership list. Unfortunately, it seems Instagram got wise to this method. Now, your name still appears on the list, but when the poster taps on it, they discover they’re blocked. It’s doubly humiliating. It should be illegal.
So, you cannot evade detection by blocking someone after viewing. What can you do? Here are your other options.
Make a creeping account solely to view Instagram stories anonymously
Creeping accounts are super common. Call them burners, finstas, or whatever you want, but they serve the same purpose: An account that is more anonymous, and that no one knows is yours. No less than Kim Kardashian employs this method; she copped to it in a podcast interview in 2022.)
There are some drawbacks to the burner account method, though. First, Instagram rolled out a feature a while back that enables users to block not only you, but any other accounts you create that are tied to your primary one. If you aren’t careful in creating it, your burners could be blocked before you even create them.
Second, if the person you want to creep on has a private account, you’re going to have to request to follow them. They probably won’t grant your request if your account is called, like, bojangles348930, has no identifying profile picture, no posts, and an outsized following-to-followers ratio. (It’s clearly a burner.) What you can do is craft a hefty fake persona and spend a lot of time curating a false life for it by posting a lot, gaining followers, and generally being active. But that’s a lot of work, and no guarantee the person you want to creep on will grant your alter ego access to their private account?
Burner accounts really only work if you want to see the Story of someone with a public account. But if they get few views or are just (rightfully) paranoid, they may block you after seeing an account they don’t recognize on the list.
Use airplane mode to see the first slide of a Story
A few of the first slides in any Story are preloaded by Instagram, which is why they pop up so fast while newer slides take a second to load. You can open a person’s profile, toggle on airplane mode, and view whichever slides have preloaded in safety. Your name won’t appear on the viewers’ list. Still, not all the slides in a long story will preload, so you’ll only be able to see a few this way. (For added safety, force close the app before reinstating your cell service and, for the love of God, make sure you’re not on WiFi when you go on airplane mode or you’ll nullify the whole thing.)
Use the pull-over method to get a peek at a Story
This tip generally only works for iPhone users, so be warned. Called, at times, Insta-peeking, this method involves navigating to your feed, where you see all the available Stories lined up at the top. Open a Story to the left or right of the one you want to see, but don’t want to be caught looking at. Then, hold your finger down on the Story to pause it and carefully—so carefully—slide your finger in the opposite direction of the Story you want to see.
Say you want to see your friend Jane’s Story, but don’t want her to know you looked. In the lineup at the top of your feed, Jane’s story appears to the left of Jill’s. Open Jill’s Story, pause it, and slide your finger to the right. You’ll see that Jill’s Story starts to disappear and part of Jane’s Story is now visible. You’ll only see a slice the first unseen-by-you slide of whatever Jane posted, and you won’t be able to see the full thing, but you will get a sense of what the slide shows.
Bear in mind here that for this one to work, you need to be following the person you want to creep on so their Story appears alongside others at the top of your feed. Also note that any wrong move or slip of the finger will open up the Story in question. Practice this method a few times on Stories you don’t care about.
For a real one-two punch, you can combine this method with the one above: Use airplane mode to view a person’s first few slides, then transition to Insta-peeking to see the next one.
Use third-party sites to see full Stories
Third-party apps that allow you to view Stories anonymously can be tremendous, but they do regularly get shut down or renamed, so don’t get too attached. My current favorites:
insta-stories-viewer.com allows you to see Stories and grid posts, which is good if you have anxiety about scrolling too far on someone’s grid and accidentally liking an old pic
https://instanavigation.com/ lets you see Stories, posts, and highlights, plus gives you a little statistical intel on how many likes and comments the account usually receives (so it’s great for haters)
anonstories.com is my favorite by far, as it shows Stories and highlights, but also reveals who else is tagged in a story, even if they’re tagged super-tiny, so you can see who the poster is with. You can even click on the tagged person and view their Stories anonymously, as long as they have a public account, for extra context. All you do to use these is type the username of your target into the text input box. All their stories suddenly appear and you can even download them if you want to, but the person will never know you saw any of it.