Connecting With Others

If your account is set to private, anyone who wants to see your photos or videos will have to send you a follower request. Follow Requests will appear in your Activity.

To approve or deny a request, tap the username of the person who requested to follow you. You’ll be taken to their profile. Tap to approve the request or to deny the request.

If you accidentally deny a follow request, ask the person to request to follow you again.

You can stop following someone by going to their profile and tapping Following. To unfollow someone:

1. Tap Search & Explore
2. Enter the name or user name of the person you want to find and tap Users
3. Tap Following then Unfollow

On their profile Following will change to Follow to let you know you’ve unfollowed that person. People won’t be notified when you unfollow them.

Note: The only way to remove someone from your followers is to block them. When you block someone, the blocked person can’t see your photos/videos or search for your Instagram account. The blocked person isn’t notified when they’re blocked.

Instagram is a great way to share your life moments through photos and videos, but you shouldn’t share someone else’s photos or videos.

You own the photos and videos you post on Instagram. We ask that you respect other members of the Instagram community and don’t share content that isn’t yours. If you want to express your excitement over a beautiful post, it’s best to double tap on the image to like it!

Learn more about reporting potential copyright infringements.

To read more about our policies, visit our Community Guidelines.

If your posts are set to public, you can add hashtags to your photos and videos.

To tag a photo or video:

1. Take a photo/video and choose a filter.
2. On the screen you see after choosing a filter, type your hashtag in the Caption field (ex: #flower).
3. If you want to tag a post you’ve already uploaded, edit the caption or include your #hashtag in a comment on your photo.

After you tag your post with a hashtag, you’ll be able to tap the hashtag to see a page that shows all photos and videos people have uploaded with that hashtag. Read our blog for more tips on using hashtags.

Things to keep in mind:

• When people with private profiles tag posts, they won’t appear publicly on hashtag pages.
• Numbers are allowed in hashtags. However, spaces and special characters, like $ or %, won’t work.
• You can only tag your own posts. You can’t tag other people’s photos/videos.
• You can use up to 30 tags on a post. If you include more than 30 tags on a single photo/video, your comment won’t post.
• Older versions of Apple iOS don’t support tapping hashtags. Instead, search hashtags by going to Search & Explore > Search > Hashtags.