There are two core types of accounts that users can have on Instagram – public and private. If you have a public account then anyone can follow you without needing your permission, whereas if you have a private account then anyone who wants to follow you has to send you a follow request.
These follow requests work much in the same way as friend requests do on Facebook in the sense that you will have to either accept or reject their request in order for them to engage with you and your posts. In this article, we are going to look at how you can access your friend requests on Instagram.
How to find friend requests on Instagram – Step by step
When someone requests to follow you on Instagram, then you should get a notification that lets you know.
By clicking on this notification you will be redirected to a screen where you can decide whether you want to approve their request or not. Y
If you don’t receive notifications for follow requests on Instagram then you will have to manually navigate to the page where all of your follow requests will gather until you take the time to make a decision on them.
To find this page, please follow these steps:
- Log in to your Instagram account via the mobile phone app.
- Select the heart icon as if you are going to check your notifications.
- At the top of this page, you should see a button that reads ‘follow request. Approve or ignore requests’.
- Select this button and you will be taken to a page where you will be able to see all the people who have requested to follow you as well as list of suggested people to connect with.
You can head to this page in the Instagram app to see if you’ve received a friend request or two without being notified. But to avoid this in the future, it’s a good idea to make sure notifications are enabled.
How to turn notifications on for follow requests
To avoid the hassle of having to find this page manually each time you want to check who has sent you a follower request, you will be better served enabling notifications for follow requests.
To do this, please take the following steps:
- Log in to your Instagram account via the mobile phone app.
- Navigate to your account page by selecting the account icon button on the bottom right-hand side of the page.
- Select the three-lined icon on the top right-hand side of the page to bring up a whole host of new options.
- Select ‘settings’, followed by ‘notifications’.
- Select ‘following and followers’ and then select the ‘on’ button underneath the ‘follower requests’ subheading.
- From now on, every time someone requests to follow you, you will receive a notification from Instagram letting you know allowing you to make an instant decision.



To ensure you receive these notifications instantly, make sure that you have approved push notifications to go through to your phone for Instagram. You can do this by finding the settings for the app within your iPhone app catalogue.
How to change your account to private
If you like the sound of being able to decide who is allowed to follow you then you are probably wondering how you can go about switching your Instagram account to private.
After all, upon sign up you will automatically be allocated a public account so you may not even know about private accounts on the platform.
To switch your account to private, please follow these steps:
- Log in to your account via the mobile phone app.
- Navigate to your account profile by selecting the icon on the bottom right of the landing page.
- Select the three-lined icon on the top right-hand of your profile and then select ‘settings’.
- From the list of settings, select ‘privacy’.
- Switch the toggle on next to ‘private account’ to make your account locked.
- Navigate back to your account page and there should now be a small padlock symbol next to your name to indicate that your account is private.
Pros and cons of a private Instagram account
Pros
- You are able to have more control over who can and can’t follow you.
- You are less likely to be targeted and harassed by trolls.
- Only those who are given permission are able to even see your posts, nevermind engage with them.
Cons
- You are not going to be able to amass a large following.
- You won’t be able to build online relationships with strangers.
- Some people may be less likely to accept your follow request if you don’t accept theirs.
Conclusion
To conclude, finding out who has requested to follow you on Instagram is a very simple task once you know where to look. You can do it within the app, and you don’t have to use any third party software like when you need to recover Instagram messages.
However, to avoid having to look in the future we would recommend that you go into your Instagram notification settings and turn notifications on for follow requests so you can deal with them as and when they come in.