How to Unfollow Everyone on Instagram (and Whether You Should)

Instagram has no “unfollow all” button, and it never has. To unfollow everyone, you have to unfollow each account one at a time, either by hand or with a tool that does it for you at a careful pace. It’s doable, but for a large list it takes days, not minutes, and it’s worth asking first whether a full reset is really what you want.

Why people want a clean slate

The urge to wipe everything usually comes from one of these:

• Your feed no longer fits you. You followed accounts for a hobby, job or phase that’s over.
• You’re rebranding. A personal account turning into a business or creator profile.
• Years of follow-for-follow. Hundreds of accounts you don’t know and never see.
• You’re close to the 7,500 limit and can’t follow anyone new. Our guide to Instagram’s following limit covers what happens there.

All of these are good reasons to clean up. Not all of them need you to unfollow everyone.

Should you unfollow everyone?

A full reset has real costs that people don’t always think about:

• Friends and family notice eventually. Instagram doesn’t send an unfollow notification, but people who check will see you’re gone.
• Your feed goes empty. Instagram will fill it with suggested posts until you rebuild it.
• You lose accounts you can’t easily find again. Small creators, local businesses, someone you met once.
• It takes a long time. The bigger the list, the more days it needs to be done safely.

For most people, a better goal is “unfollow everyone except the accounts I actually care about”. That’s still a near-reset, but without the regret.

Alternative: start a new account

If you want a truly blank following list, a fresh account can be faster than emptying an old one. You keep the old profile, or archive it, and follow only the accounts you want on the new one. This makes sense for rebrands. It makes less sense if your followers matter to you, because they don’t move over.

How to do a full reset safely

If you’ve decided to go ahead, the order matters more than the speed.

1. Make a keep list first. Go through your following and note anyone you’d miss. Even 20 or 30 names is enough to start.
2. Protect those accounts. In Unfollower Tracker, add them to the whitelist (a Pro feature) so they can’t be selected by mistake. Our guide to whitelisting covers who belongs there.
3. Run a full scan. Unfollowing is disabled until a scan completes, so nothing is decided on a partial list.
4. Unfollow in daily batches. Select a batch, confirm, and let it run with its randomized delays and cooldowns. Then stop for the day.
5. Rescan and repeat until only your keep list is left.

How long will it take?

Instagram doesn’t publish unfollow limits, so nobody can give you an exact figure. What’s certain is that a few thousand accounts can’t be cleared safely in one sitting. At a cautious pace with breaks and a daily cap, expect a large list to take one to several weeks.

As a rough illustration of the product limits, not Instagram’s: on Pro, Unfollower Tracker caps unfollows at 150 per day, so 1,500 accounts would take at least ten days. You can slow it further in Settings, and on a new or recently blocked account you should. For more on daily volume, see how many people you can unfollow per day.

What not to do

• Don’t use a tool that promises it all in an hour. That speed is what triggers blocks. Any automation carries some risk; a fast one carries much more.
• Don’t give your password to an unfollow service. Logins from someone else’s servers look suspicious and put your account at risk.
• Don’t start following new accounts mid-reset. Heavy following and unfollowing together looks like spam. Finish first, then rebuild.

After the reset

An empty following list is a chance to be deliberate. Follow accounts slowly, a few at a time, and only ones you’d actually miss. Turn on favourites for the people you never want to lose in the feed. A month later, your feed should look like you chose it, which was the point.

The short version

• There’s no unfollow-all button. Every account is a separate unfollow.
• Keep a short list of people you care about and protect it before you start.
• Spread the reset over days or weeks, and stop at the first warning.