Nothing lasts forever — especially when it comes to Instagram followers. But, thankfully, you don’t have to wait for someone to unfollow you or delete their account to remove them. With Instagram, you have the ability to manually remove anyone you wish from your list of followers. All it takes is a few taps to get the job done.
Whether you’re deleting inactive accounts or severing a virtual relationship, this guide will cover everything you need to know about how to delete followers on Instagram.
How to delete followers on Instagram
It will come as a relief to learn that removing followers on Instagram is a simple, straightforward process. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind before you start pressing Delete.
Removing vs. restricting vs. blocking followers on Instagram
There are three ways you can go about getting rid of specific accounts that follow your Instagram profile: removing, restricting, and blocking.
Restricting an account is basically one step above removing and one step below blocking. When you restrict an account, all of their comments and likes (as well as their direct messages) are hidden. They can still interact with your profile, but you will no longer see those interactions.
Here’s how to find your restricted accounts:
- Open your Instagram app.
- Press the icon of your profile picture at the bottom-right of your screen.
- Press the three horizontal lines at the top-right of the screen.
- Navigate to Settings and privacy > Restricted under How others can interact with you.
From there, you can unrestrict accounts and use the search bar to find accounts to restrict.
Blocking, on the other hand, restricts a person’s profile to an even greater degree. When you block an account, that person won’t be able to comment, like, or direct message you. In fact, blocked accounts cannot find or view your profile at all. The only things that blocked accounts can see are your likes and comments on public posts.
Here’s how to find your blocked accounts:
- Open your Instagram app.
- Press the icon of your profile picture at the bottom-right of your screen.
- Press the three horizontal lines at the top-right of the screen.
- Navigate to Settings and privacy > Blocked under Who can see your content.
If you no longer want someone’s account to be blocked, you have the option to unblock them. And if you suspect that someone has blocked you, here’s how to find out who blocked you on Instagram.
Removing an Instagram follower is a much less restrictive approach. Removed followers will potentially still be able to access and interact with your account — unless you take some precautions, which we’ll go over in a later section.
How to remove a follower on Instagram
Removing a follower on Instagram is just as simple as blocking or restricting an account. Here’s how to do it:
- Open the Instagram app.
- Press the icon of your profile picture at the bottom-right of your screen.
- Press Followers.
- Scroll or use the search bar to find the account you wish to remove.
- Press Remove next to the account.
- Press Remove.
Following these instructions will remove an account from your list of followers.
Is there a way to mass-delete your followers?
The previously mentioned steps are fine and dandy for removing a follower or two. But what do you do if you want to rid your account of multiple followers — or all of them?
Well, you won’t find the solution through Instagram. At the time of this writing, you can’t bulk-remove followers within the app itself. Instead, you’ll have to enlist the help of a third-party tool. For the purposes of this guide, we’ll be using the free app InstaClean – Cleaner for IG.
Here’s how to use it to mass-delete followers:
- Download and open InstaClean – Cleaner for IG.
- Log in with your Instagram account information.
- Press Authorize.
- Select Followers.
- Scroll through and select all of the followers you wish to remove.
- Press the three horizontal buttons at the top-right of the screen.
- Select Remove.
With this app, you can also mass-block followers or mass-delete posts from your own Instagram profile.
What happens when you remove a follower on Instagram?
Now that you’re armed with all this knowledge, it’s time to go over some frequently asked questions about removing Instagram followers.
No. When you remove a follower from your Instagram account, the person isn’t notified. The only way they would find out is if they went to view your profile and noticed the active Follow button. Also, if your profile is set to private, they will be unable to see your posts or Stories.
Again, no. When someone removes you as a follower from their account, you won’t be notified. The only way you would be able to tell is if their profile was set to private, which would mean you could no longer see their content.
It depends on your account’s privacy settings. If you’re a public account, removing someone doesn’t prevent them from seeing your profile, posts, or Stories. They can still view everything — and even send you messages. Your content just won’t show up on their feed anymore. They can also refollow you at any time unless you block their account. On the other hand, if your profile is set to private, removing a follower will prevent them from seeing your content. They may request to refollow you, but you will have to approve them in order for them to see your posts and Stories again.
No. When you remove someone from your followers’ list, their likes and comments will still remain on your posts.
How to remove fake or inactive followers on Instagram
Every now and then, it’s good to do a big sweep of your Instagram followers and see which accounts are inactive or possibly fake. Social media experts refer to these accounts as “ghost followers.”
Usually, ghost accounts will have a low number of followers but a high list of accounts they’re following and low-quality content or no content at all. And while there are third-party apps that claim to be able to detect such accounts, they aren’t very reliable. The only way you can cleanse your account of ghost followers with confidence is by manually going through your list of followers and removing ghost accounts one by one.
Here are some other red flags to look for when checking your followers list for fake accounts:
- They leave nonspecific comments under other accounts’ posts, such as “cool” or “nice pic.”
- They have tons of followers but not that many posts (or no posts at all).
- They have a generic bio that doesn’t reveal very much information about who they are.
- Some of their posts seem to promote a product or business.
- The account seems to have been created recently.
It’s a tedious task, but this process will help keep your account secure and safe from being flagged by Instagram.
Does Instagram delete fake followers?
While it’s not a guarantee, Instagram has made announcements regarding its intent to remove fake accounts from the app. The only way to make sure you have no fake accounts following you is to go through and manually check your list of followers.
As the owner of your Instagram account, you have the right to remove, restrict, or block followers as you wish. We hope this guide has shown you how to remove followers on Instagram and has made managing your audience a bit easier.
