You remember the "Following" tab, right? It was that glorious, slightly chaotic feed where you could spy on your friends' late-night scrolling habits. You’d see your cousin liking fitness memes at 3 AM or your ex liking a photo of a beach in Bali. It was a goldmine for social curiosity. Then, in October 2019, Instagram’s Head of Product, Vishal Shah, told BuzzFeed News that the feature was being scrapped because people didn't even know their activity was public. Just like that, the most direct way to see what people like on Instagram vanished.
Honestly, it changed the whole vibe of the app.
Nowadays, if you’re trying to figure out how to see what people like on Instagram, you’re dealing with a much more private ecosystem. Meta has doubled down on "user privacy," which is a fancy way of saying they’ve locked the doors and hidden the keys. But here's the thing: while there isn't a master list anymore, you can still find what you're looking for if you know where to poke around. It just takes a bit more manual effort and a basic understanding of how the algorithm prioritizes data.
The manual hunt is the only real way left
Forget those sketchy third-party apps promising "Instagram Activity Trackers." Most of them are just phishing scams or data scrapers that will get your account flagged or banned by Instagram’s automated security systems. Seriously, don't give them your password.
Instead, the most reliable method for how to see what people like on Instagram is the "Post-by-Post" check. It sounds tedious because it is. If you have a specific person in mind—let’s call him Dave—and you want to know if he liked a specific influencer's photo, you have to go to that influencer's profile. Open the post. Tap on the "Likes" count or the "and others" text.
Now, here is a trick not everyone realizes. Instagram’s search bar within the "Likes" list is surprisingly smart. You don’t have to scroll through 5,000 names. If you follow Dave, his name will usually bubble up to the very top of the likes list automatically because the algorithm prioritizes your social circle. If he’s not at the top, just type his username into the search bar at the top of that specific post's like list. If his name pops up, he liked it. If not, he scrolled past.
It's a digital version of "he loves me, he loves me not," except with double-taps.
Checking "Likes" via Mutual Connections
Sometimes you aren't looking for a specific post, but a general vibe of what someone is into. While you can't see a chronological feed of their likes, you can see their interactions on mutual friends' posts.
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Go to a mutual friend's profile. Look at their recent photos. Usually, Instagram will show a small snippet under the caption that says "Liked by [Username] and 42 others." This only works if you follow both the person who posted and the person who liked it. It’s a passive way to see activity, but it’s one of the few breadcrumbs Meta still leaves on the trail.
The "See All" trick on profile pages
There is a slightly more advanced way to handle the how to see what people like on Instagram question if you are looking at a brand or a public figure. If you are on a public profile, you can sometimes tap the "Followers" list and see "Followers you know." While this doesn't show likes directly, it shows interest.
But wait, there’s a more granular detail.
When you are looking at a post from someone you both follow, look at the comments. Often, people who like a post will also leave a quick emoji or a "🔥". Instagram’s comment ranking system puts people you follow at the top of the comment section. So, if you’re wondering what Dave is up to, checking the top of the comments on a mutual friend's post is often a faster indicator of "activity" than digging through a list of 10,000 likes.
Why did Instagram actually kill the Following tab?
When Instagram removed the activity feed, they claimed it was for "simplicity." But let's be real. It was a privacy nightmare. According to an interview with Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, the goal was to make the app feel like a place where you could interact without feeling like your boss or your mom was watching your every move.
Privacy advocates, like those at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), have long argued that granular activity tracking leads to harassment and stalking. By removing the tab, Instagram basically protected users from themselves. The downside? It made "social discovery"—finding new stuff based on what your friends like—almost impossible. Now, the algorithm decides what you should like based on its own black-box data, rather than your friends' actual tastes.
Can you see your own likes?
Ironically, the easiest person to track is yourself. If you’re trying to find a post you liked three weeks ago but didn’t save, Instagram actually has a very clean way to do this.
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- Go to your profile.
- Tap the three horizontal lines (the "hamburger" menu) in the top right.
- Tap Your Activity.
- Select Likes.
This is the only place in the entire app where a chronological, grid-style feed of likes still exists. You can filter by date, author, or even "oldest to newest" if you want a cringe-inducing trip down memory lane to see what you were liking in 2014. It’s a powerful tool for personal data management, but notably, it’s a one-way street. You can see your history; no one else can see yours.
The myth of the "Instagram Activity Tracker" apps
If you search Google or the App Store for "how to see what people like on Instagram," you will be bombarded with ads for apps like Snoopreport or various "Insta-trackers."
Here is the cold, hard truth: these apps are either breaking Instagram's Terms of Service or they are selling you public data you could find yourself. Some of them work by "scraping"—using bots to constantly check the like lists of thousands of accounts and then compiling a report for you.
Does it work? Sometimes.
Is it risky? Extremely.
Instagram’s "Anti-Bot" team is incredibly aggressive. If they detect an account is being monitored by a third-party service, they can shadowban or permanently delete the account being tracked and the account doing the tracking. Furthermore, these services often charge a subscription fee for information that is, frankly, incomplete. They can't see likes on private accounts unless they are following them, and they often miss data if the user un-likes a post quickly.
What about private accounts?
If the person you’re curious about has a private account, the "rules" of how to see what people like on Instagram become a total dead end. Unless you are an approved follower, you can’t see their posts, let alone who they are interacting with. There is no "backdoor" or "hack" for this. Anyone telling you otherwise is likely trying to install malware on your device.
The only way to see activity on a private account is to be part of that person's "Circle of Trust." Even then, you’re back to the manual method of checking individual posts.
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Monitoring "Tagged" photos
Another way to see what someone is "liking" or at least engaging with is to check their tagged photos. People often "like" the photos they are tagged in.
On a person's profile, tap the small icon on the right that looks like a person in a frame. This shows every photo other people have posted of them. If you see a recent tag, there’s a 99% chance that person liked that photo and probably commented on it. It’s a side-door approach to seeing their recent activity and social circle without needing a dedicated activity tab.
The psychological shift of hidden likes
In some regions, Instagram even experimented with hiding like counts entirely. They did this in places like Canada and Australia before rolling it out as an optional feature worldwide. The logic, according to Meta's press releases, was to "depressurize" the app.
When you can't see the total number of likes, or you can't easily see who liked what, the "social competition" aspect of the app fades. For some, this is a relief. For marketers and the naturally curious, it’s a hurdle. If you’re a business trying to do competitor research, not being able to easily see who is liking your rival’s posts makes "audience sniping" much harder.
Practical steps for the curious
If you are determined to see what's happening in your niche or social circle, stop looking for a "magic button." It doesn't exist anymore. Instead, use these steps to gather the data you need:
- Create a "Faves" list: Use the Instagram "Favorites" feed to prioritize posts from people you actually care about. This ensures you don't miss the posts where mutual interactions are likely to happen.
- Use the Desktop Version: Sometimes, browsing Instagram on a Chrome or Safari window on a laptop is easier for searching "Likes" lists because you can use the "Cmd+F" or "Ctrl+F" function to find specific names faster than scrolling on a thumb-screen.
- Check Stories: People are much more likely to interact with Stories (polls, sliders, questions) than grid posts these days. While you can't see who liked someone else's story, you can see who they are "Mentioning" if they repost a story.
- Watch the "Suggested" feed: Instagram's algorithm often shows you posts "Because you follow [Name]" or "Because [Name] likes this." It’s not a guarantee, but if the algorithm keeps pushing a specific creator into your feed, it’s often because people in your immediate social circle are engaging with that creator.
The era of open-book social media is over. Instagram has moved toward a "dark social" model where interactions happen in DMs and private stories. While you can still manually hunt for likes on public posts, the app is designed to keep those digital footprints faint.
Your best bet for seeing what people like is to look at the patterns of who they follow and who they tag. The "Like" is a quiet signal now, tucked away in the name of privacy and simplified UI. If you really need to know what someone is interested in, you might just have to do it the old-fashioned way: ask them, or look at what they’re sharing to their own Stories.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Audit your "Your Activity" section to see what data Instagram is keeping on you.
- Clean up your "Following" list to see if the "Liked by..." prompts in your feed become more relevant.
- Use the search bar within "Likes" lists on specific posts to find mutual connections quickly instead of scrolling.