How to Find & Cancel Sent Follow Requests on Instagram

There are two types of accounts on Instagram: private and public. In order to follow a private account, first you need to send a follow request. If the person accepts it, then only you will start following them and see their posts and stories in your news feed.

Find & cancel sent follow requests on Instagram


The person can also cancel your follow request or keep it pending. You might not want to keep your follow request pending if the person isn’t accepting it. Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t have any feature that can help you to cancel your sent follow requests all at one place.

Of course, you can go to the user’s profile and cancel your follow request manually, but that would be a tedious task if you have a long list of users and most probably, you will not even remember who you have requested to follow.

In this tutorial, we are going to discuss how to find your sent follow requests on Instagram. There is no need to use any third-party application. We have also shared a simple trick that can make it easier for you to cancel those follow requests.

Find who you’ve sent follow requests on Instagram

Instagram saves all your account data such as your profile info, connections, account activity, stories activity and more. It also contains a list of people who you have sent follow requests that are pending and haven’t been accepted yet.

This step-by-step guide will show you how to access your account data and find your sent follow requests on Instagram –

  1. Open Instagram app on your phone and login to your account.
  2. Go to your profile and tap the menu button (three-parallel lines at the top right corner of the screen).
    Instagram profile menu button
  3. After this, go to Settings > Security.
    Instagram settings
  4. Click on the “Access data” option here.
    Instagram security settings
  5. Now find “Current follow requests” under Connections and click the “View all” option next to it.
    Account data
  6. Here you will find a list of usernames of the people who have your follow requests pending. You can tap the “View more” button to load more usernames.
    View sent follow requests on Instagram

If you are using Instagram on desktop or mobile browser, you can directly see your sent follow requests by visiting this link – https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/current_follow_requests

Note: If you are looking for someone and they aren’t on the list, it means that they have accepted your follow request, canceled it, or blocked you. You have to check their profile to find out what actually happened.

Cancel sent follow requests on Instagram

It’s quite simple to cancel your follow request. You just need to copy the username and search it on Instagram. After that, open the profile and tap the “Requested” button – It will change back to the blue follow button. That’s it.

This would be a tedious task if you have a long list of usernames. We have got a simple trick to make it easier for you. First, you need to install a text editor app on your phone such as Google Keep. Copy all the usernames and paste them in the app.

Now copy this: https://www.instagram.com/ and add it before every username as shown in the below picture (Don’t give any space in-between). After this, reopen the app and then you will see that every username has changed in a clickable link.

Cancel sent follow requests links

When you click on the link, it will take you to the user’s profile directly where you can cancel your follow request. You have to repeat this process for every user. Isn’t that simple?

So that’s how you can find and cancel all your sent follow requests that haven’t been accepted. It would be appreciated if Instagram comes up with a new hustle-free feature that can help you manage your follow requests easily. If you want to ask something about this tutorial, feel free to share it in the comment section.

About the author

Vivek Chaudhary Author
Tech writer & founder @Geek Instructor • Vivek Chaudhary is an experienced tech blogger who has been writing about technology for more than ten years. He's written over 1500 articles covering various tech topics. Vivek is passionate about sharing his expertise to help others. Beyond the digital realm, he enjoys traveling and creating videos on YouTube. Feel free to contact here: vivek@geekinstructor.com

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