How to Open Your Instagram Data Export ZIP on iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows

iPhone and iPad

1. When you tap download on the Export your information screen, Safari saves the ZIP to the Files app, normally under Downloads in On My iPhone or iCloud Drive, depending on your Safari settings.
2. Open Files, go to Downloads, and find the file. Its name begins with instagram- followed by your username and a date.
3. Tap the ZIP once. Files extracts it on the spot and a folder with the same name appears beside the archive. No dialog, no progress bar; it simply shows up.
4. Tap the folder, then connections, then followers_and_following.

Tapping a JSON file inside opens a preview that scrolls through the text. It is readable but not pretty. If Files refuses to extract, the download didn't finish; delete the ZIP and download again from the app.

If you want a cleaner view of a JSON file than the Files preview, long-press it, choose Share, and send it to a notes or text-editor app. The export is plain text, so any app that opens .txt files can display it. For a large account the followers file can run to thousands of lines, and scrolling it on a phone is slow; that is the point at which uploading the ZIP to a checker beats reading it.

Android

1. The download lands in your Downloads folder. Open Files by Google (or My Files on Samsung) and go to Downloads.
2. Tap the ZIP. Files by Google shows the contents and an Extractbutton; tap it. On Samsung's My Files the button is also labelled Extract.
3. A folder with the archive's name is created next to it. Tap through connections and followers_and_following.

Some Android browsers save downloads to a browser-specific folder rather than Downloads. If you can't find the ZIP, open the browser's own downloads list and tap the file from there; it will offer to open it in your file manager.

Mac

Safari or Chrome saves the ZIP to Downloads. Open it in Finder and double-clickthe archive. macOS extracts it with the built-in Archive Utility and places a folder with the same name alongside. Safari may have already done this for you if “Open safe files after downloading” is on, in which case you will see both the ZIP and the folder. Open the folder, then connections → followers_and_following. JSON files open in TextEdit, or in Quick Look by selecting one and pressing the space bar.

Windows

The file arrives in Downloads. In File Explorer, right-click the ZIP and choose Extract All…, confirm the destination, and click Extract. Windows 11 also lets you double-click the ZIP to browse it without extracting, but some tools can't read files from inside an unextracted archive, so Extract All is the safer choice. Open the resulting folder and go to connections → followers_and_following. Notepad opens JSON files; a browser renders them slightly more readably if you drag the file onto a tab.

One Windows-specific catch: if the ZIP was downloaded through Edge or Chrome, SmartScreen may flag it as an unrecognised file the first time you open it. The archive is from Instagram and contains only text and, for a full export, your own media; choosing to keep it is safe. Windows also hides file extensions by default, so a file shown as followers_1 is the same followers_1.json described below.

What you'll find inside

If you requested only Followers and following, the extracted folder is small. The top level holds a connections folder; inside it, followers_and_following; and inside that, the lists:

• followers_1.json — who follows you. Large accounts also have followers_2.json and onward.
• following.json — who you follow.
• Optional extras such as pending_follow_requests.json, close_friends.json, and blocked_profiles.json, present only if you have used those features.

If the files end in .html instead, the export was requested in HTML format; they open in a browser and show the same lists as styled pages. The differences are laid out in HTML vs JSON. A full export of everything adds folders for media, messages, ads, and more, described in what's inside your Instagram data export.

Reading followers_1.json and following.json

Open followers_1.json and you see a list of objects. Each one has a string_list_data array containing a single item with three fields: href, the profile URL; value, the username; and timestamp, the moment they followed you as seconds since 1 January 1970. Paste a timestamp into any epoch converter to get a readable date. following.json has the same shape wrapped in a top-level relationships_following key, and the timestamp there is when you followed them.

Reading these by eye works for a few dozen entries. Comparing two lists of a thousand each by hand does not, and getting it wrong means unfollowing someone who does follow you. If you want a spreadsheet, the export followers list tool turns the JSON into a CSV in your browser.

Skip all of that: upload the ZIP as-is

None of the extraction above is required. The Instagram export analyzer accepts the ZIP straight from your Downloads folder, locates the followers and following files itself, merges numbered chunks, handles HTML, and shows who doesn't follow you back, who you don't follow back, and your mutuals. Everything runs locally in the browser tab and the file is never uploaded to a server. The same ZIP-in, results-out flow works for Threads and TikTok exports, which use the same kind of archive.