Can Someone See You Viewed Their Instagram Story if You Blocked Them?
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Have you ever been creeping on someone’s Instagram profile and you accidentally open their story?
As you know, when you open someone’s story on Instagram, then they’ll be able to see that you viewed their story.
When you post an Instagram story, you’re able to see a list of every single person who has viewed the story.
So, when you look at someone’s story, whether it’s an ex or a friend of a friend that you don’t know, or anyone else for that matter, that person is able to see that you viewed their story.
You don’t have to follow someone for them to know that you’ve been watching their story.
If they have a lot of followers and a popular account, then they probably won’t notice that you watched their story unless they’re specifically looking for you because your username won’t stand out to them.
They’ll have hundreds or even thousands of accounts listed as having viewed their Insta story.
But if it’s a small account like somebody you know, someone in your friend circle, or just somebody who caught your eye, then there’s a much higher chance they’ll pay closer attention to who is viewing their stories and this can end up feeling kind of awkward.
Whether you viewed someone’s story by accident, or you’re just feeling embarrassed, or you’re worried they’ll think you’re creeping on them, then here’s what you can do.
If You Block Someone On Instagram After Viewing Their Story, Can They Still See That You Watched It?
No, if you block someone on Instagram after watching their story, they won’t be able to see what you viewed their Instagram story.
When you watch someone’s story, your name is added to the list of people who have viewed it, but if you then go ahead and block that person, then your name will disappear from the list.
As long as you block them right away, it’s very unlikely they’ll know that you watched their story.
The only way they could possibly know is if they were refreshing the list of viewers right when you viewed it, and they saw it before you block them – but there’s almost a 0% chance of this happening.
What to Do When You Watch Someone’s Instagram Story By Accident
If you accidentally watch someone’s Instagram story and you don’t want them to know, then you should block their account immediately.
If this is someone you want to follow and you want them to follow you, and so you don’t want to block them, then you’re kind of out of luck.
But in the case where you follow each other, why would you (or they) care if you viewed their story?
Don’t worry about it, it’s normal to view the stories of people you follow because they pop up when you’re viewing the other stories on your feed.
But if you’re “spying” on someone’s profile, or just really wanted to see them and what they are up to, and you accidentally opened the story of an account you don’t follow and you don’t want them to know, then you have to block them.
But there’s more to it than you should know before you do this.
They Will Know You Blocked Them If They Check
When you block the user to hide the fact that you viewed their story, they won’t get a notification or anything like that.
But if they already suspect you might have viewed their story or if they check on your profile sometimes, they’ll see that your profile isn’t showing up and they’ll know that you either blocked them or deactivated your account.
They’ll assume that you blocked them.
Deactivating Your Account Instead of Blocking Them
If you accidentally viewed someone’s story, or you went there in a moment of weakness and you’re feeling embarrassed, then blocking them is the first option.
If they’re keeping tabs on your account, they’ll notice that you blocked them.
If you don’t think they’re visiting your profile on a regular basis, you can block them after viewing the story, then unblock them the next day after their story has expired, and chances are they aren’t going to dig back into posts from days ago to see who viewed it.
So, your other option besides blocking them is simply to deactivate your instagram account for enough time for their story to expire.
Then, you can reactivate your account, or you can even wait a bit longer.
If they see that your account is gone and they suspect that you’ve blocked them, they might log-out or get a friend to check if your account shows up.
If they take this extra step, and they see that your account is gone and that you didn’t block them, that’s another option if you don’t want them to think that they’re the reason or that it had anything to do with their story.
Here’s How They Can Find Out Your Viewed Their Story
The only way they can know with 100% certainty that you viewed their Instagram story is if they see you on the list of people who viewed their story.
As discussed above, you can remove your name from the list of people who have viewed an Instagram story in one of the two following ways:
- Blocking them
- Deactivating your account
Blocking the person who posted the story will remove your name from the list of people who have viewed their Instagram story, but if they try to visit your profile, it’s possible for them to figure out that you blocked them.
The other way is by deactivating your account, and in this case, if they decide to do a little snooping around, they’ll be able to determine that your account is deleted and that you haven’t blocked them.
The option that you go with really depends on whether or not you care if they know you blocked them, or if you want plausible deniability to say that you just deactivated your account and it had nothing to do with them
How to View an Instagram Story Without Them Knowing
There are a few sneaky ways to view someone’s Instagram story without them knowing.
With these methods, you don’t need to delete, deactivate, or block them. Here are some stealthy ways to watch someone’s Instagram story secretly.
How To Use a Burner Instagram Account
You can make a second Instagram account and use that for watching their story.
They’ll be able to see that this burner account viewed their story, but they won’t know who it belongs to so they won’t know it’s you.
This works well for larger figures on the platform, people you don’t know personally, and so on.
But if you’re trying to watch your exes stories, and they don’t have a ton of followers, and some random new account without any photos keeps popping up, they’ll probably have a pretty good guess as to who it is.
If their account is private, you’ll need to be an approved-follower in order to view their story.
What is Half-Swiping on Instagram?
Half-swiping is a technique that you can use to take a sneak peak at someone’s Instagram story without them knowing.
When you’re swiping through the stories of people that you follow, you basically swipe halfway into the next story, without actually letting it take up the screen.
You’ll probably want to practise this technique a few times before doing it.
Keep in mind that in order for this to work, you need to be following the person so that their story shows up amidst the rest of the story at the top of your feed.
Notice when you open a story, you can see a preview of the next story by swiping to the side and not releasing your finger from the screen?
How to Unview an Instagram Story
It’s not possible to unview an Instagram story or mark it as unviewed.
It’s not like an email where you can mark it as unread.
But if the person hasn’t noticed that you’ve seen their story yet, you can follow the instructions above and either block them until the story expires (24 hours from when it was first posted), or deactivate your account.
Once you’ve viewed it, it’s viewed, so you’ll need to take a more drastic step as outlined above.
It’s still possible that they’ll notice that you viewed their story before you have a chance to block them or deactivate your account, but that’s not likely.
The key is to make sure that you don’t unblock or re-activate your account until after their story has disappeared (it takes 24 hours for a story to disappear, but if you viewed it on hour 23, then you only need to wait an hour before it’s gone).
