Check who doesn't follow you back on Instagram from a PC or Mac

How it works

1. 1

   Request the export from your computer

   Open accountscenter.instagram.com in your browser and sign in to Instagram if prompted. Go to Your information and permissions → Export your information → Create export, pick your Instagram profile, choose Download to device, select only Followers and following, set the range to All time and the format to JSON, then click Start export.

2. 2

   Download the ZIP when the email lands

   Meta emails a link within about 10–20 minutes (valid for four days). Click Download your information, confirm your Instagram password if asked, and the browser saves the ZIP to your downloads folder — C:\Users\you\Downloads on Windows, ~/Downloads on a Mac. Safari on macOS may unzip it automatically; see the Mac notes below.

3. 3

   Drag the ZIP onto UnfollowChecker

   Open unfollow-checker.com and drag the file from your Downloads folder onto the drop zone, or click it to browse. The comparison runs in the tab in under a second; there is no upload.

4. 4

   Review on the big screen

   Your non-follower count shows free, with a preview and CSV downloads of both lists. The full list of usernames is a one-time $2.99 and comes with an emailed CSV you can open in Excel or Numbers.

Why desktop is the easiest place to do this

The whole flow is faster on a computer. Accounts Centre on the web shows the same export screens as the app, so you never need your phone; the browser's download folder is a known place rather than a Files app you rarely open; and dragging a file onto a page beats working through a mobile file picker. The real advantage comes afterwards: a list of 300 non-followers is a chore to scroll on a phone but easy to scan in a wide table, open profiles in new tabs, and work through with a coffee and no notifications interrupting.

Browser extensions: what they do inside your instagram.com tab

The other desktop option is a Chrome extension, and it's worth understanding what one does before installing it. An unfollowers extension injects a script into your logged-in instagram.com tab and uses your session cookies to call the same private web endpoints the site uses to draw your followers list — except it pages through them at a rate no person scrolling could match. Many add an Unfollow all button on top. Instagram's rate limiting can't tell an extension from a bot, because functionally there is no difference, and the result is an Action Blocked warning or a forced password reset.

Chrome Web Store review checks policy compliance, not what the extension's developer does with the data it collects, and extensions update themselves silently — the version you reviewed isn't necessarily the one running next month. We cover this in depth on the Instagram unfollowers Chrome extensions page. UnfollowChecker is an ordinary web page in its own tab; it never touches instagram.com.

The spreadsheet workflow with the free CSVs

Desktop is where the free CSV downloads earn their keep. Download followers.csv and following.csv from the results page, open both in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets, and you have your complete lists with follow dates. If you want to verify the comparison yourself, a COUNTIF against the followers column next to each following username returns 0 for every non-follower — the same answer the tool gives, done by hand.

• Sort following.csv by date to surface the accounts you followed years ago and forgot.
• Save a dated copy of each CSV monthly; over time that folder becomes your own unfollowers tracker with no third-party account involved.
• The export followers list and export following list pages explain the columns and the placeholder entries for deactivated accounts.

Reviewing the results on a large screen

The free view shows the exact count and a blurred preview of the names. Paying $2.99 once reveals the full list sorted by follow date, and we email the CSV so you can file it with the exports. Each username links to the profile; on desktop, middle-click or Ctrl/Cmd-click to open several in new tabs and decide in bulk who stays. When you unfollow, do it on instagram.com by hand and at a sensible pace — the hourly and daily figures are in the Instagram unfollow limit guide. Rapid unfollowing from a desktop session is just as detectable as from a phone.

Mac and Windows notes

A few platform quirks come up often enough to list:

• Safari on macOS unzips automatically. By default Safari opens "safe" files after downloading, which turns the ZIP into a folder. Either download in Chrome or Firefox instead, re-download with that setting off (Safari → Settings → General → Open "safe" files after downloading), or right-click the folder and choose Compress to get a ZIP back.
• Windows shows it as a Compressed (zipped) folder. That's fine — don't extract it; drag the ZIP itself onto the page.
• Edge, Firefox, Brave and Arc all work. The tool uses standard browser features; nothing is Chrome-specific.
• Keep the ZIP. Request another export next month and upload both to the free who unfollowed me tool to see who left.

What this tool can't do

It compares your own export and nothing else, so it can't look up a competitor's or a friend's non-followers, and it can't fetch anything from instagram.com while you're logged in — that's the extension behaviour we're avoiding. It doesn't unfollow for you. And because the data is a snapshot, a follow that happened after Meta generated the file won't appear until you request a fresh export. For the current state, request a new export; for the history, keep the old ones.

Frequently asked questions