Insta Stories Viewer Not Working? What to Check

Insta Stories Viewer is the name two websites use for an anonymous Instagram story viewer: insta-stories-viewer.com and instastoriesviewer.com. Both ask for an account's username and play that account's public stories in the browser, with no Instagram login. When one of them stops showing stories, the message on the screen usually tells you which part failed.

The table below lists the errors people see, with the likely cause and the next step for each. The sections after it take the errors one at a time. This guide is part of the Alternatives section of the blog, which covers viewer sites people look up by name.

The errors at a glance

Each error, one at a time

Blank page, or a spinner that never stops

Viewer sites load a profile's stories at the moment you ask for them and show whatever comes back. A blank result, or a spinner that keeps turning, means nothing came back for that username in time. Either the site could not reach the profile, or the site itself is not running.

Instagram's help page on data scraping explains how a whole site can fail at once. Instagram's Terms of Use do not allow collecting information in unauthorized ways, and the page says Instagram has teams that detect, investigate and block patterns of behaviour linked to scraping. A site that loads stories for many visitors can stop working without notice when that happens.

• Reload the page once. A second reload rarely changes the answer.
• Try a username you know has a story up today. If that one fails too, the site is down, not the profile.
• Open a second viewer and enter the same username.

User not found, or No such account

The site looked for the username and found no public profile under it. Three things cause this: a typing slip, a username the owner has changed, or an account that has been deactivated or deleted. A changed username is the hardest to spot, because the old handle may now belong to nobody, or to someone else.

If the name still fails, look the person up first and copy the handle from the profile you find. The Instagram username search page covers finding the right account from a name.

This account is private

This message comes from Instagram's own setting, not from the viewer. Instagram's help page says accounts are public by default and that the owner can make an account private at any time. After that, only followers the owner approves can see its posts and stories.

No viewer site can change that. A page that claims it can open a private account is asking for something else: your Instagram login, your payment details or an app install. Our page on the private Instagram viewer sets out what a private account still shows to everyone.

No stories to show

The profile loaded, but the stories row is empty. A story stays up for 24 hours unless the owner deletes it sooner, so an account that has not posted today has nothing to show. A story shared only to Close Friends never reaches a viewer site either: it goes to the people on that list and no one else.

Highlights are the exception. They are stories the owner has saved to the profile, and they stay until the owner removes them. If the viewer has a highlights tab, look there; the highlights viewer page covers how highlights open.

Too many requests, or Try again later

Some viewer sites cap how many lookups one visitor can make in a short time, and show this message when the cap is reached. Wait before trying again: every reload counts as another lookup.

If the same site shows the message for every username, the problem is on the site's side, and a second viewer is the quicker route. Dumpor Not Working? How It Compares With Other Viewers compares the main kinds of viewer on login, stories, posts and ads.

A login box asks for your Instagram details

A story viewer needs one thing from you: a public username. A page that asks for your Instagram username and password, or sends you to a login screen that is not on instagram.com, is not working as a viewer.

If you already typed your password into such a page, the data scraping page lists what to do. Work through it in this order:

1. 1

   Check your recent login activity

   Remove any login you do not recognise.

   In the appAccounts CenterPassword and security
2. 2

   Change your password

   Instagram's page says changing it logs you out of every logged-in device, including any suspicious login.

   In the appAccounts CenterPassword and security
3. 3

   Pick a strong password

   Use at least six numbers, letters and special characters together, and avoid repetition.

4. 4

   Turn on two-factor authentication

   A second code is then needed for every new login.

5. 5

   Remove the app's access

   You can remove a suspicious third-party app's access to your account at any time.

Why viewer sites stop working

A viewer site sits between you and Instagram. When Instagram blocks the pattern a site uses, every lookup on that site fails at once. That is why one site can show the same error for every username while another loads stories normally on the same day.

Some sites come back after a few days; others close for good. Instagram Viewer Sites: Which Ones Closed and When keeps a dated record of the ones that closed, and Pixnoy Not Working? What It Showed and What Still Loads maps what one closed site showed to the pages that still show it.

Instagram's page also notes that scrapers often target data that is public, and asks account owners to check that their privacy settings match what they want to share. For anyone looking up a public account, the result is the same: public stories can load in a viewer, and the owner decides what is public.

Status on the day

Viewer sites change without notice, so this guide records what the two sites showed on the day it was checked.

Viewers that still load public stories

If the site you use is down, three pages on this site cover the same need from different sides. The Iganony alternative guide compares viewer sites people search for by name and lists what replaces them; the story viewer pages explain how a public story loads without your account.

Questions