Five Instagram hacks you’ll wish you’d known earlier

View your account history

Looking to reminisce on what your old username was, or maybe what you used to have in your bio? Both these things and more can be discovered when you go into Access Data. To look back on these profile details head into your Settings, then click on Security and under ‘Data and History’ is where you’ll find Access Data. In this little time machine you can view all of your past account info, profile info, business profile info, connections, account activity and Stories activity.

Pre-filled DM responses

Influencers, we know your DMs are constantly being flooded with your followers asking “What app did you use to edit your photo?” or “Where can I buy that makeup brush set?” so this IG hack will save you so much time when replying to these questions. Firstly, make sure you’re setup as a Business Account, then head into Settings, click on Business and you’ll see ‘Quick Replies’.

When you tap on this, you are given the ability to save common responses so that you can use them at any time. All you need to do is pop in a shortcut – a keyword that when you type it, your entire saved message will appear for you to reply with. For example, if one of your keywords is “editing app” you can set your auto message to be “Hi there! I use the XYZ app and XYZ filter to edit my Instagram photos”.

Download your archive

If you’re like us, we have posted 1000+ images to Instagram and countless amounts of Stories. Imagine if you could download a copy of what you’ve shared on Instagram so far. Lucky for you, we found a way to do this in less than a few clicks. Again, head into your Settings, then Security and under Data and History is Download Data. All you need to do is jot down your best email address, click Request Download and Instagram will send you an email within 48 hours with a link to a file with all your photos, Stories, comments, likes and more. An incredibly quick way to download all of your past content and reuse it when needed.

Uncover new colour schemes

Instagram Stories’ Create lets you type text over a coloured gradient background, but do you sometimes just want to type over one bold coloured background? Theres actually a way for you to do this. Just snap a random shot on IG Stories, click the draw icon, pick your favourite colour and then just hold your finger down on the screen until your background changes to your chosen colour. It’s as simple as that. An added bonus is if you’re looking for a colour, other than the ones IG provides you, just again, hold your finger down on one of the coloured circles given to you at the bottom of the screen, and a new palette with every shade of colour you can think of comes up for you to pick from.

Set a personalised usage reminder

You don’t need to tell us that Instagram is addictive. We could spend hours just scrolling through amazing content but we know we shouldn’t. Giving yourself a break from social media is important and Instagram knows this. You can actually manage your time on IG a little better using their Daily Reminder’ feature. Head into your Settings, click on Activity and a graph will pop up, indicating your daily average time spent on Instagram for the past week. Underneath that is ‘Set daily reminder’, pop in your personal time limit and once you’ve reached your daily limit of Instagram time, you’ll be sent a notification. Super helpful if you struggle to stop scrolling from time to time.

And there you have it, five Instagram hacks you’ll wish you’d known earlier. Use this super easy guide when logging into IG next and become a pro at optimising your app usage.