See Who Someone Recently Followed on Instagram

Instagram Killed the Chronological Following List. We Brought It Back.

There was a time when you could tap on someone's profile, go to their following list, and see exactly who they recently followed on Instagram. Most recent at the top. Clean, simple, useful. Then Instagram changed the sort order and buried it under some algorithm nobody asked for.

Now the following list is a mess. Sorted by mutual connections, interaction patterns, whatever Meta thinks is "relevant." You can scroll through 500 accounts and have zero idea which one was followed yesterday versus three years ago. For anyone trying to see recent follow activity on Instagram, it's basically useless now.

That's the problem we fixed. The Ick App checks public profiles every hour and shows you exactly who they recently followed, in order, with timestamps. No guessing. No scrolling through thousands of names hoping something looks new.

How the Recent Follow Tracker Works

Dead simple. Three steps.

That's the whole thing. No Instagram login required. The person you're tracking will never know. It works because we only look at publicly available data, the same stuff you'd see if you opened their profile yourself.

What You Can Actually Track

People use the recently followed Instagram tracker for different things. Here's what the app actually shows you.

New follows. The big one. Someone follows a new account at 2am? You'll know by 3am. I started tracking my ex about three months after we broke up. Shouldn't have. But I did. The first notification I got was him following some girl from his gym. That one stung. But at least I knew instead of spending weeks wondering.

Recent followers. Who just followed someone? If you're tracking a brand account or influencer, this shows you their new audience. Useful for competitor analysis, influencer vetting, or figuring out if someone's buying followers (100 new followers in an hour with zero engagement? Yeah, those are bots).

Follow patterns over time. The app keeps history. So you're not just seeing the latest recent follow, you can scroll back days or weeks and see patterns. Does your boyfriend follow three new girls every Friday night? The data will show that. Does a competitor follow a batch of accounts before every product launch? You'll spot it.

Unfollows. The other side of the coin. Someone gets unfollowed and you'll see that too. If you want a deeper dive into that specifically, we built a separate tool to see who unfollowed you on Instagram using your data export.

Why People Check Someone's Recent Follows

I'm not going to pretend this is all business intelligence and competitor research. It's not. Most people tracking recent follows on Instagram are doing it for personal reasons. And that's fine.

You're in a situationship and you want to know if they're still following new people. You broke up and you can't stop checking. Your friend is being weird and you're trying to figure out why. Maybe you're a social media manager and you actually do need this for work. All valid. I've been all four of those people at different points.

The relationship angle is the most common one. There's a reason "who did my boyfriend recently follow on Instagram" has thousands of monthly searches. People want to know. They've always wanted to know. Instagram just made it harder to find out, so tools like this exist.

Manual Checking vs. Using a Tracker

You could technically track recent follows manually. Screenshot the following list, wait a day, screenshot again, compare. I did this for about two weeks before I wanted to throw my phone in a river. Here's why it doesn't work.

Instagram's following list isn't sorted by date anymore. So even if someone followed a new account five minutes ago, it might show up in the middle or bottom of the list. You'd have to compare hundreds of names side by side. Miss one? You'll never know.

The other problem is timing. Manual screenshots only capture the moment you take them. If someone follows an account and unfollows it an hour later, you missed it entirely. The app catches it because it scans every hour automatically.

The Safety Question

Every time someone hears "Instagram tracker" they think of those shady apps that ask for your password and get your account banned. Fair concern. Let me explain why this is different.

We never ask for your Instagram login. Not once. The app doesn't log into Instagram as you, doesn't scrape anything behind a login wall, doesn't touch your account in any way. It reads publicly available following lists, the same data anyone could see by visiting a profile in a browser. That's it.

The person you're tracking won't get a notification. Won't see you in their viewers list. Won't know you're checking their recent follow activity. There is no mechanism in Instagram that would alert them. For more detail on how tracking works safely, check out our Instagram tracker guide.

And if you want to check your own followers instead of someone else's, you can see who doesn't follow you back using a free browser tool we built. Different method, same philosophy: no passwords, no risk.

Who Is This Actually For

Honestly? Everyone who's ever wondered what someone is doing on Instagram. But if I had to break it down:

• People in relationships who noticed their partner is spending more time on Instagram and want to understand why
• Post-breakup curiosity, the "I know I shouldn't check but I'm going to" phase that literally everyone goes through
• Social media managers tracking competitor accounts, influencer partnerships, and brand follows
• Influencers and creators monitoring who's following them, who's following their competitors, and where their audience overlaps
• Parents keeping an eye on who their teenager is connecting with online
• Business owners watching industry accounts to spot trends before they go mainstream

Nobody needs to justify why they want to see recent Instagram follows. The data is public. We just organize it in a way that's actually useful.

Common Questions About Instagram Recent Follows

Still curious about where the name comes from? Read about what is the ick and how a dating slang term became an Instagram tracking app.