FollowBell
On a public account, yes. Highlights are stories an account chose to keep on its profile, in the round covers under the bio. They stay there until the owner removes them, and a public profile can be read without an Instagram login.
On a private account, nothing: highlights are part of the profile it shows only to the people it accepted.
Why highlights are worth a look
Most people do not post a story every day, so on a given evening there is usually nothing to watch. Highlights are the opposite: holidays, friends, a birthday, a city, sometimes years of it, arranged by the person themselves. It is how they choose to be seen, and it is always there.
That is why highlights answer a question stories rarely do: who is this account? Open a profile you do not know, and the highlights tell you more in a minute than the bio does.
How to view highlights without an account
In the Instagram app or website
Logged in, you tap a cover and watch. That is the simple way, and it is done as your own account. Logged out, Instagram's website shows less and less before asking you to sign in.
With an anonymous highlights viewer
A viewer loads the highlights of a public account on a server and shows them to you. No Instagram account of yours is involved, so there is nothing of yours to show up anywhere on the owner's side. Websites do this one account at a time, when you think of checking.
How it works in FollowBell
FollowBell is an Android app that watches public Instagram accounts. Highlights appear where you already are:
- On the page of an account you watch, as a row of covers with their titles.
- On the card of someone it just followed. When a watched account follows somebody new, tap the name and their highlights are right there, with their story if they have one up.
- In the same player as stories. Tap a cover to watch, hold to pause, sound on videos.
- With the date each story was posted. The month for older ones, “3 days ago” for recent ones. That date comes from Instagram and is the posting date, nothing else.
No highlight, or a private account: the row simply is not there. FollowBell does not download, store or share any of it.
What you can do: open every highlight of a public account, see when each story in it was posted, without an Instagram login.
What no app can do, whatever its ads say: open the highlights of a private account, see stories the owner archived without highlighting, or see items they shared only with Close Friends.
What stays out of reach
- Private accounts. Highlights included, nothing is visible.
- The archive. Every story an account posted is kept in an archive only its owner can see. Only what they put in a highlight is public.
- Close Friends items. A story shared only with Close Friends stays limited to that list, highlight or not.
- Removed highlights. Once the owner deletes one, it is gone for everybody.
Highlights, stories and new follows
Watch a public account and see its highlights, its stories and every new follow, without an Instagram login. Android, on Google Play.