This Easy Hack Lets You See Who Screengrabs Your Instagram DMs

There’s nothing worse than worrying about Instagram notifying a user if you screengrab heir content. Let’s play out a scenario: You open up Instagram and start to scroll through the latest posts. Thirty minutes later and you’re somehow in your old DMs with your ex of three months ago, reading through a cringey conversation you just have to share with your friends. So, you screengrab it, pause for a second, and realize you may have just made the biggest mistake of your life: Your ex might get an Instagram notification when you screengrab their DM. You know it, I know it, we all know it: that feeling when your stomach drops and you want to hide from society forever. But don’t freak out just yet, I’m here to set your mind at ease: Your ex will not get a notification if you screengrab their DM — well, in most cases.

If you take a screengrab of a user’s post, story, reel, IGTV, or permanent DM conversation, the user will not get an Instagram notification. However, if you screengrab a disappearing photo on Instagram — which is a photo that a user can send that will no longer be visible in the user’s inbox once it is opened — or a video from the DM conversation, the user will indeed receive a notification. It’s important to note that a user must play or open the video or picture and then screengrab it in order for the user to be notified.

If someone screengrabs a disappearing photo or video, a spinning circle will appear next to the image notification in the DMs to notify the user of the screengrab. If you hold down on the photo or video notification icon, you can unsend it, reply to it, or view the details. If you click on the details, you can see exactly what time it was sent, opened, or if/when it the screengrab was taken.

Instagram changes its guidelines and introduces new features all the time, so it’s important to stay up-to-date. Next time if you’re scrolling through your ex’s, or your ex’s cousin’s, friend’s, mom’s Instagram and screengrab something, you’re pretty safe — just keep an eye out for those sneaky photo notifications.