FollowBell
Read their following list, then read it again later. Whatever is new was followed in between. That is all an Instagram following tracker does, by hand or in an app.
It only works on public accounts, and it only starts today: Instagram gives no follow dates, so nothing from before your first read can be recovered.
What you will know, and what no app can promise
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who they follow right now | Yes, on a public account |
| Every new follow from the day you start | Yes, with the time FollowBell caught it |
| Every unfollow from the day you start | Yes, the same way |
| When a follow happened | Yes, from the day you start: the time FollowBell caught it. No app can date older follows: Instagram never publishes a date |
| What they followed before you started | Everyone they follow today, in full. Start now and nothing gets past you after that |
| A private account's follows | No app can, without being accepted by them |
| Who viewed their profile | No app can: anyone who promises it is making it up |
Why the top of the list is not their latest follows
On your own profile, Instagram lets you sort who you follow by date. On anyone else's, it doesn't, and the list is reordered before you see it. We measured it: the ten accounts shown first sat at positions 23, 42, 18, 12, 16, 35, 43, 10, 38 and 34 of the real list.
So scrolling to the top tells you nothing about what is recent. The full measurement.
Tracking someone's following by hand
- Open the public profile and tap Following.
- Screenshot or write down the whole list.
- Come back later and do it again.
- Compare the two. Any name that is new was followed in between, any name gone was unfollowed.
On a list of 40 accounts, that is five minutes. On 500, in an order that changes between visits, it stops being realistic long before it stops being possible.
How FollowBell tracks it
FollowBell is an Android app that does the comparing for you, on public accounts, without an Instagram login.
- Everyone they follow, sorted. Type a username and the whole list sorts itself into women, men and other. It's an estimate, and it says so.
- A notification for each new follow. Unfollows too. When the new person follows them back, the notification says so.
- A journal, day by day. Including the follow they took back an hour later, which a list read tomorrow would not show at all.
- More than follows. New stories, and profile changes: bio, photo, name, link, going private, posts removed.
Every time FollowBell shows is the time it caught the change. It never pretends to know when Instagram recorded the follow.
Following tracker or follower tracker?
They track opposite sides. A follower tracker watches who follows an account, usually your own, and most of them need your Instagram login to do it. A following tracker watches who an account follows.
FollowBell is a following tracker. It does not tell you when someone new follows the account you watch. It tells you when that account follows someone new, and whether that person follows back.
What you can know: everyone a public account follows today, and every follow and unfollow from the day you start, with the time it was noticed.
What no app can tell you, whatever its ads say: follow dates, what happened before you started, and anything about a private account.
Start tracking today
Watch a public account and get a notification when it follows someone new. No Instagram login. Android, on Google Play.