How To Find & Cancel Pending Instagram Requests

Accidentally sending a follow request to the wrong person on Instagram can be a potentially embarrassing mistake. As these mistakes rack up over time, you could eventually find yourself with dozens of unapproved follow requests. The good news is that the popular photo and video-sharing social networking service allows you to cancel pending follow requests as long as you meet one obvious condition: The person you’ve sent the request to has not accepted or declined it yet.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible (at least not yet!) to remove pending Instagram requests using the Instagram mobile app, but even if you rarely use Instagram in your web browser, you won’t have any problem finding and cancelling pending follow requests thanks to our step-by-step guide.

How To Find Pending Instagram Requests

Step 1: Open Instagram In Your Web Browser

The first thing you need to do, is access Instagram’s web interface. You can do this by going to Instagram.com in any web browser either on your computer or mobile device, however doing this on your computer will be much faster and more convenient.

Step 2: Log In To Your Instagram Account

It shouldn’t take more than a few seconds for Instagram to load and greet you with a login screen. Enter your username, phone number, or email address, along with your password to login. Alternatively, you can use your Facebook account to login. If you can’t remember your Instagram password (which happens quite often), just click on “Forgot password?” to reset it.

Step 3: Open The Settings Menu

Now that you’re in your account, you need to go to the settings menu. To open the settings menu, you need to go to your profile page by clicking on your Instagram account name or picture. Then, click the settings gear icon next to the “Edit Profile” button.

Step 4: Open Privacy & Security Settings

With the Settings menu open, you need to select the fifth option from the top, called “Privacy and Security“, to bring up the privacy and security settings page.

Step 5: View Account Data

Look near the bottom of the privacy and security settings page for a section called “Account Data“. Click the “View Account Data” link.

Step 6: Display Your Pending Instagram Requests

To display your pending Instagram requests, all you need to do is click “View All” under “Current follow requests“. If you don’t have any pending follow requests, you will see the following message:

Pro Tip: You can also visit the “Current follow requests” page directly by entering the following URL in your web browser after you’ve logged into your Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/accounts/access_tool/current_follow_requests

How To Cancel Sent Instagram Requests

Now that you can see all the accounts you’ve requested to follow, it’s time to cancel them.

For some reason, Instagram doesn’t let its users remove pending follow requests from the same page where it lists them (although that would be a very useful feature). To cancel a sent request, you need to visit the profile page of the account you’ve sent the request to.

Simply copy/paste the account names in your Instagram search and unfollow them. This process might take some time, depending on how many follow requests you’ve sent out.

Read Now: How To Permanently Delete Your Instagram Account

As you can see, finding and cancelling Instagram follow requests isn’t complicated – you just need to know where to look. If you found this guide useful, let us know in the comments below. Also, make sure to follow us on Instagram!