How to Delete Your Instagram Account

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks on the planet. The photo-sharing site and app has grown into a huge community with over 300 million daily users in 2017. However, some may want to call it quits and delete their Instagram account. If so, we have all the details.

This guide will go over everything users need to know about how to delete an Instagram account. Alternatively, we’ll explain the benefits to temporarily disabling instead. Rather than throwing everything away when you delete it permanently.

Read: How to Stop Instagram Auto Play Videos

Whether Instagram is taking up too much of your time, or you don’t want to see all the politics, the best step is deleting your account. Many choose this over privacy concerns as well. It’s extremely simple and only takes a few seconds. Lets get started.

Over the years Instagram has really improved. Now in 2017 we have story mode, tons of share features, plenty of filters, and the direct messages option is great. Last year they even added live video streaming, similar to Facebook Live.

That may not matter though. Some want to just delete everything and move on. Regardless of your reasoning, here are the two important steps users need to know when deleting an Instagram account.

How to Delete Your Instagram Account

First things first, you cannot delete you account inside the mobile app. Whether that’s iPhone or a Samsung Galaxy, it won’t work. Users are required to get on a computer or mobile browser to complete the task. It can be done from a phone, just not with the app.

Before you delete your account, we’d recommend reading up on temporarily disabling it first. Once you delete it, everything and all your photos or video are gone forever. Disabling it lets them remain, until you want to come back. If not, here are the instructions.

Instructions to Delete Instagram Account

1. Login to Instagram.com from a computer or mobile browser
2. Select Edit Profile and scroll down to Disable or Delete Account
3. Alternatively simply go to the Delete Your Account Page
4. Select why you are deleting your account from the drop-down menu (Option to delete will appear after selecting why)
5. Re-enter your account password
6. Click the Red “Permanently Delete My Account” button

That’s it. You’ve now successfully permanently delete your Instagram account. As a reminder, everything will be lost forever. We’d recommend backing up or saving any important photos or video first, because you won’t be able to get them back after you hit the Delete button per our instructions above.

If you’d like to delete a different account (for those that have multiple) click the user-name in the top right of the delete page and log-out. Then login with the correct account and follow the steps above.

Temporarily Disable Instagram Account

Another option for users is to temporarily disable an account instead. It looks gone forever, but it’s not. If you temporarily disable an account your profile, photos, comments and likes will be hidden until reactivated — by logging back in.

The steps are almost exactly the same, only instead of going to the delete page you simply hit edit profile, and scroll down to temporarily disable. Here are the instructions.

How to Temporarily Disable Instagram 

1. Login to Instagram.com from a computer or mobile browser
2. Select Edit Profile in the top-right and scroll down to Temporarily Disable Account
3. Select why you are disabling your account from the drop-down menu (Option to disable will appear after making a selection)
4. Re-enter your account password
5. Click the big “Temporarily Disable Account” button

As a reminder, you can only disable your account once per week. So make sure you’re ready before you hit the button mentioned above. To re-activate it simply navigate to Instagram.com and sign in to your account. It will instantly become active and everything will return. Including all photos, videos, comments and likes.

We’re all done. Users can now be less distracted without the temptation to open Instagram. Someone following or bothering you can’t anymore, or whatever the reason may be. Again, save anything before you delete an account. Or play it safe and disable your account instead. Drop us a comment below with any questions.