Instagram is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over one billion monthly active users. And while you may think you know everything about this photo and video sharing app, there are actually a lot of Instagram hacks and features that you probably don’t know about.
In this blog post, we’re going to share with you 39 of the best Instagram hacks and features on the app. From using hashtags to get more followers, to editing your photos like a pro, to finding the best filters for your images, these tricks will definitely take your Instagram game up a notch.
Let’s dive in.
General Instagram hacks
Instagram hacks for photo and video sharing
Instagram Story tricks
Instagram bio and profile hacks
Instagram hashtag hacks
Instagram direct messaging hacks
Instagram for Business hacks
Instagram Reels hacks
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Ready to impress your fans and wow your followers? These Instagram hacks will make people think you’re a technological genius.
1. Stop seeing posts or stories from accounts you follow but don’t loveYou don’t want to see any more of your aunt’s ferret videos, but you don’t want to hurt her feelings with an unfollow, either. The solution? Give her a mute!
How to do it:
Muting Stories, Posts, and Notes
Then, click MuteMuting Messages
Keep Lark at your fingertips and get Hefe out of your sight. This secret Instagram feature lets you customize your menu of filter options.
How to do it:
Take a walk down memory lane with a review of all your past photo likes.
(So. Many. Puppers.)
How to do it:
If you used Instagram.com to like posts, you won’t be able to see them here.
4. Clear your search historyMake sure no one ever finds out that you’ve been hunting for photos of “Mr. Clean with shirt off”. This Instagram hack lets you wipe your Instagram search history squeaky clean.
How to do it:
Set up notifications for other accountsAdd alerts for your favorite accounts and never miss a new post from your favorite Japanese mascot fan page again.
How to do it:
Think of “Collections” as your digital scrapbooks. Use this Instagram trick to save your favourite posts for later.
How to do it:
Then tap SavedThis Instagram hack is the equivalent of the Disney vault. You can hide old posts out of sight with the “Archive” function.
How to do it:
If you want to restore content to your public profile, simply tap Show on Profile at any time and it’ll show up in its original spot.
8. Limit your screen timeJust because you can scroll forever doesn’t mean you should.
Save yourself from yourself with Instagram’s built-in daily timer.
How to do it:
Make your feed stand out with these Instagram features for your photos and video content.
9. Create line breaks in your captionOne of our favorite Instagram caption tricks is creating line breaks that let you take control over the pacing of your caption.
How to do it:
Note: While the breaks will start a new line, they won’t create the white space that you would see between two paragraphs.
To create a paragraph break, write out your photo caption in your phone’s notes app and copy it over to Instagram. Wanna break up lines even further? Try using bullet points, dashes, or other punctuations.
Prep your content to post at the best times with the help of Hootsuite’s Instagram scheduling tool.
How to do it:
Watch this video to find out how to schedule Instagram posts (and Stories! and Reels!) in advance:
Note: Check out our guide to scheduling posts on Instagram to learn how to do this from a personal account.
PS: You can schedule Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, and Carousels with Hootsuite too!
11. Choose a cover photo for your videoYour hair looked particularly cute 10 seconds into your video, and you want the world to know. Here’s how to handpick the still that kicks off your vid.
How to do it:
A picture is worth a thousand words—so do you really need other people adding to the conversation? Here’s an Instagram hack that helps you keep the comment section quiet.
How to do it:
Read on for our favorite Instagram Story hacks or watch the video below for our favorite tricks of 2022:
13. Record video hands-freeHands-free mode is like a more low-maintenance Instagram Boyfriend. Reliable. Takes instruction well.
Loyal. Loving.
How to do it:
For when everyone needs to see the hilarious prank you pulled on Daryl in accounting—except your boss.
How to do it:
Method 1
Method 2
You can also choose people to hide your story from as you’re looking at who’s seen your story.
Note: Hiding your story from someone is different from blocking them, and doesn’t prevent them from seeing your profile and posts.
15. Use your own fonts on StoriesWhy Instagram won’t allow you to just use Jokerman font natively, we may never know. But where there’s a wackily designed ’90s serif, there’s a way.
How to do it:
Change the cover of your Story highlightsUse this Instagram trick to highlight your highlights with a fresh first image.
How to do it:
Change the hues of individual letters, or even harness the magic of the rainbow with this sneaky trick to color your world.
How to do it:
For when one snapshot of your DIY macrame dog bikini per post isn’t enough.
How to do it:
Or, watch this video on how to add multiple photos in one Instagram Story:
Want more tips and tricks for Stories? Check out our long list of the best Instagram Story hacks in 2021.
19. Find more colors to draw withDon’t let your creativity falter because of Instagram’s short color list.
Get every color under the sun with this Instagram hack.
How to do it:
Bonus: Download a free checklist that reveals the exact steps a fitness influencer used to grow from 0 to 600,000+ followers on Instagram with no budget and no expensive gear.
Get the free guide right now!
Don’t let your bio be an afterthought! These Instagram features will help you manage your profile, presence, and discoverability.
Even if your friends’ feeds are full of photos of your Margarita Monday exploits, the world never has to know.
How to do it:
Note: You can also prevent tagged photos from appearing on your profile in the first place. Just go to the Photos of You tab and select any photo. Then, select Edit on the top right. Here, you can toggle Manually Approve Tags.
21. Add line breaks to bioUse this Instagram trick to break up that block of text and share your info in a visually appealing way.
How to do it:
Harness that Instagram SEO by slipping keywords into the name field of your bio, and you’ll be more likely to pop up in search results for that industry.
How to do it:
Add special characters and use special fonts for your profileJazzing up your profile with fun fonts or the perfect wingding is as easy as a copy-and-paste. (One note: use special characters sparingly to accommodate accessibility! Not every accessible reading tool will be able to interpret them correctly.)
How to do it:
When it comes to discovery, hashtags might be the most important of all Instagram features.
So make sure you know these simple hashtag hacks.
If you want to be discovered, including hashtags in your post is key. Here’s how to figure out which ones are the best fit for getting your content it’s Star is Born moment.
How to do it:
Get inspiration in your feed and never miss the latest #NailArt masterpieces (are those… Tom and Jerry nails?).
How to do it:
Hide hashtags on postsYes, Hashtags get you discovered. But they can also be visual clutter. (Or just look a little… thirsty.) Here’s how to reap the benefits without cramping your style.
How to do it:
Method 1
Method 2
Another method is to separate your hashtags from the rest of your caption by burying them beneath an avalanche of line breaks.
Hide hashtags in StoriesHelp your Story be seen by more people, without cluttering it up with hashtags.
How to do it:
Note: You can also use this trick with location tags and mentions if you want to keep your Stories visually clean.
Instagram direct messaging hacksNeed some help managing the people sliding into your DMs? These Instagram tricks are exactly what you need.
28. Turn off your activity statusYou don’t have to let the world know when you are or aren’t online: maintain an aura of mystery!
How to do it:
Send disappearing content to your friendsNew in 2022, Instagram announces Notes–a feature that lets you post disappearing notes to your followers.
How to do it:
Note: Notes can be a maximum of 60 characters in length.
30. Create chat groupsIf you want to stay in touch with your closest friends or make a chat with your best customers, this Instagram hack can help.
How to do it:
Use these Instagram hacks to make your business stand out online.
Officially declaring yourself as a business on Instagram gives you some serious advantages, like running ads and getting insights. If you’re a brand, what are you waiting for?
How to do it:
For more tips on how to optimize your profile, check out our post on Instagram Bio Ideas for Business.
Opening an Etsy shop or trying to bump up your e-commerce sales? Shoppable Instagram posts make it easy to promote and sell products directly from your feed.
How to do it:
Once complete, you’ll be able to tag products in posts just like you tag other accounts.
33. Send automated welcome messages to new followersWelcome new followers with a fun welcome message. This Instagram hack automates an important touchpoint so you can stay connected to your fans.
How to do it:
Add a link treeOrganize your links with a user-friendly link tree. Here’s how to build one with Hootsuite.
How to do it:
If you don’t use Hootsuite, consider building a link tree for your Instagram bio with a tool like linktr.ee or build your own.
Instagram Reels hacksOf all the new Instagram features, Reels are the latest and greatest. Use these Instagram tricks to make your Reels go viral!
35. Schedule ReelsSchedule your Reels in advance and you never have to worry about missing the moment. All you need is a social media management tool. We’ll show you how to do it using our favourite one: Hootsuite.
How to do it:
Why have one piece of video content when you can have more? Here’s how to make the most out of your Stories by converting them into Reels.
How to do it:
1. Select the Stories Highlight you want to use for your Reel and then tap the “Convert to Reel” button.
2. Pick your audio (you can search, use music you’ve saved, or pick from the suggested tracks) and Instagram does the work to synch the audio with your clip
3.
Click “Next,” and you have a final editing screen where you can add effects, stickers, text, etc.
4. When you’re done fine-tuning, the last step is setting your sharing settings. This is also where you can add a caption, tag people, locations, and edit or add a custom cover.
5. You can adjust the Advanced Settings if necessary, specifically if your Reel is part of a paid partnership. Here you can also enable auto-generated captions and manage your data usage, if necessary.
6. Tap Share and watch your new Reel highlight go viral! (Hopefully.)
85% of Facebook content is watched without sound–so it’s safe to assume your audience is skipping the audio on your Reels. To improve accessibility, and make it easier for people to understand your content add captions to your Reels.
How to do it:
Note: One of the best Instagram caption tricks is to wait until the audio has been transcribed and then go through and edit the text for any mistakes.
Ever wondered how influencers get those cool backgrounds for their Reels? Use this Instagram feature to get your very own green screen.
How to do it:
Don’t let your latest Reel muck up the aesthetic pleasure of your Instagram feed! Customize your Reel cover photo and keep that front page sparkling.
How to do it:
Manage your Instagram presence alongside your other social channels and save time using Hootsuite.
From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts, engage the audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.
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Grow on Instagram
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Graham CLULEY
July 15, 2019
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A security researcher has been awarded $30,000 after discovering a serious vulnerability that could potentially have put any Instagram account at risk of being hacked.
Following a recent increase in rewards offered for the discovery of critical account takeover vulnerabilities in Facebook and Instagram, Indian security researcher Laxman Muthiyah chose to take a close look at the photo-sharing service.
As he describes in a blog post, Muthiyah explored whether there might be a vulnerability in how Instagram handled password reset requests for users who have forgotten their login credentials.
Mutiyah found that when users asked for a password reset via Instagram’s web interface, the site would email a reset link to the user’s email account.
After a few minutes of testing Mutiyah couldn’t find any bugs, and so turned his attention instead to how smartphone users recover access to their Instagram accounts.
What Mutiyah found was that Instagram offered the option for users locked out of their accounts to request that a six-digit secret security code be sent to their mobile phone number or email account. If that passcode is entered, a user can regain access to their Instagram account.
In theory, if a hacker could enter the six-digit security code they would be able to break into the Instagram account (and reset the password locking out the legitimate owner.)
Now, that passcode could potentially be stolen if a hacker had somehow managed to gain access to their target’s email account, or had hijacked control of their victim’s mobile phone number via a SIM swap scam.
But Mutiyah wondered if there might be another way to break into accounts if neither of those options were available.
Mutiyah realised that all a hacker would need to do was enter the correct six digit code – a code that could be any combination between 000000 and 999999 – within the ten minute window Instagram would accept the code before expiring it.
Up to one million numbers to be entered within ten minutes, in order to change an Instagram account’s password.
Of course, the likes of Facebook and Instagram aren’t going to simply sit quietly as an automated script tries a brute force attack to guess the correct security code. Instead they have rate-limiting in place to detect when multiple attempts have been made to get past the security check and slow down subsequent attempts – meaning the ten minute window of opportunity expires.
In Mutiyah’s tests he discovered that when he cycled through 1000 attempts to guess an Instagram account’s security codes, 250 of them went through and the subsequent 750 requests were rate limited.
However, after a few days of testing the researcher was able to discover that Instagram’s rate limiting mechanism could be bypassed by rotating IP addresses (in other words, not using the same computer to brute force the recovery code) and sending concurrently from different IP addresses:
“Sending concurrent requests using multiple IPs allowed me to send a large number of requests without getting limited. The number of requests we can send is dependent on concurrency of reqs and the number of IPs we use. Also, I realized that the code expires in 10 minutes, it makes the attack even harder, therefore we need 1000s of IPs to perform the attack.”
Mutiyah says that he used 1000 different machines and IPs to achieve easy concurrency, and sent 200,000 requests in his tests. He shared a YouTube video with Facebook and Instagram’s security team to demonstrate the attack in action:
Of course, 200,000 requests isn’t quite the million requests that would be necessary to guarantee the correct recovery passcode would be entered to allow an Instagram account to be hijacked.
Mutiyah’s investigation concludes that in a real attack, 5000 IP addresses would be needed to hack an Instagram account. Although that sounds like a large number, it can actually be easily achieved at a low price (Mutiyah says there would be approximately US $150 cost if a cloud provider like Google or Amazon was used).
All Instagram users should be grateful that Laxman Muthiyah chose to responsibly disclose the security vulnerability to Instagram’s security team rather than monetize his discovery by selling it to online criminals.
It’s easy to imagine that a technique like this would be very attractive to many hackers interested in compromising Instagram accounts, and they might be prepared to pay much more than the $30,000 Muthiyah received in the form of a bug bounty.
All internet users are reminded to better secure their online accounts with strong, unique passwords and to enable two-factor authentication wherever possible.
A notification pops up on the smartphone screen: "We detected an unusual login attempt from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
" The first reaction is panic, especially if you live in, say, Vladivostok. What could it be? System failure? Or is someone from the other side of the world really encroaching on your account?
There is no way to panic in such a situation - this will only play into the hands of the burglars. So that you can remain calm and survive this incident with minimal losses, we will arm you with knowledge: we tell you what the matter might be and how to act. nine0003
First, let's figure out how a stranger could gain access to your account at all. There are several options here.
A third party site where you registered might have been leaked. Having acquired a list of logins, e-mail addresses and passwords, scammers use them for a substitution attack, that is, they try to enter stolen credentials on many sites. Unfortunately, many people set the same passwords to protect their accounts in different services - this is what criminals are counting on.
nine0003
Alternatively, your Facebook or Instagram credentials may have been leaked from the app you trusted them to. For example, in June last year, thousands of passwords from Instagram accounts leaked to the network, the owners of which used the Social Captain service to buy likes and followers. It turned out that he did not encrypt customer data, and anyone could get access to it. It is reasonable to assume that many users of the service have since experienced hacking attempts.
It may also be that some time ago you fell for phishing, and your login with a password fell into the hands of scammers directly. They clicked on some link, and on the page that opened, very similar to the Facebook or Instagram login screen, they entered their credentials. So they ended up with the criminal. For example, most recently, our experts discovered a phishing campaign in which victims were lured to phishing pages by the threat of blocking their Facebook account due to copyright infringement.
Your password may have been stolen by malware you picked up somewhere. Many Trojans have a built-in keylogger, a program that registers keystrokes on the keyboard. All logins and passwords that the victim enters, the keylogger directly passes into the hands of attackers.
Someone may have stolen your access token. So that you don't have to enter a password every time you log into Facebook or Instagram, it saves a small piece of information needed to log in to your computer, which is called a token or access token. If an attacker steals the current token, he will be able to log into the account without a username and password. nine0003
Tokens can be stolen in different ways. Sometimes this is done through vulnerabilities in Facebook itself - for example, in 2018, attackers were able to get access tokens to 50 million Facebook accounts. Also, attackers can use browser extensions to steal tokens.
It's possible that you logged into Facebook or Instagram from someone else's device - at a party, in an Internet cafe, in a hotel lobby, and so on - and did not log out after that.
Or, for example, they forgot to log out of their account on a device that they had already sold or donated. Now someone has discovered your oversight and logged into your account. nine0003
Your account may not have been hacked at all, but they are trying with a fake suspicious login notification. This is the same phishing that we talked about above, but a slightly different version of it. Instead of the threat of blocking, scammers can use fake suspicious login notifications with a link to phishing sites similar to the login page. Attackers expect that the victim in a panic will go to a fake site and enter their username and password there. nine0003
We have sorted out the possible causes, now it's time to act. To get started, log into your account - but in any case not through the link from the notification (as we already know, it can lead to a phishing site), but through the mobile application or by entering the address in the browser manually.
If the password does not match and you can no longer log into your account, refer to the detailed instructions on what to do if your account has already been hijacked, which we published earlier.
If you are still allowed into your account, go to your account settings and verify the authenticity of the notification. For each social network, the path to the desired settings item will be different - see how this is done on Facebook and Instagram. Then go to the “Account Logins” section: if there are no suspicious entries there, then everything is in order, and the message about the hack was still phishing. nine0003
If you really see a suspicious one in the list of logins to your account, then it's time to hurry up to take protective measures - timely actions will help soften the blow:
This will reset the access tokens. Avast solutions have a good reputation, but several incidents cast doubt on their reliability.
We tell you whether you can trust Avast products.
How to watch the World Cup without becoming a victim of scammers.
Gained a few thousand followers on Instagram? Even more? Congratulations! You are a real celebrity! But in addition to laurels, well-known Insta bloggers have a greater risk of account theft. Not so long ago, scammers invented a new scheme to hijack popular Instagram accounts. We will tell about it now. nine0003
"Your account will be permanently deleted due to copyright infringement," the email reads.
It looks quite official: here you have both the official header and the Instagram logo, and the sender’s address is very similar to the real one – in most cases it is [email protected] or [email protected].
The notice gives you only 24 hours (48 hours in some versions) to file your appeal. In the letter itself, you will also find a button for appealing the complaint - Review complaint. If you click it, you will be taken to an extremely believable phishing page. nine0003
This page talks about how much the service cares about copyright protection. But the most important thing is that there is a link on the page, according to which you can allegedly appeal the deletion of your account. To make everything look even more natural, the page has a long list of language choices, but it's there only for show - whatever you choose, the page is displayed exclusively in English.
After clicking the link to appeal the deletion of your account, you will be prompted to enter your Instagram account information.
But that's not all - then a new message appears: "We need to authenticate your application and make sure that the email address matches the one specified in Instagram." If you agree to address verification, a list of possible domains will appear on the screen. Selecting one of them, you will see a prompt to enter an email address and (suddenly!) password from it. nine0003
You will then see a message for just a few seconds that your request is being processed, after which you will be redirected to the real Instagram site. This is another trick that adds credibility to the scam.
This is not the first time popular Instagram users have been targeted by scammers. Recently, a wave of thefts took place under the pretext of obtaining a blue checkmark - a verification badge (Verified Badge).
As soon as your username and password are in the hands of attackers, they will gain access to your Instagram profile and be able to change data to recover it.
They can then demand a ransom to get the account back, or start sending spam and other malicious content from it. Not to mention what "open spaces" in front of them will open the password from your email. nine0003
Here are some tips to help keep your Instagram account safe:
