instagram_web_unfollow.js

const randInt = (min, max) => Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1) + min) // min and max included
const sleep = ms => new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms))

const followersElement = getFollowersElementWithUsername(getUsername())
followersElement.click()

function getUsername () {
  const pageTitleElement = document.getElementsByTagName('h2')[0]
  if (!pageTitleElement) throw new Error('No title to get username from')
  return pageTitleElement.innerHTML
}

function getFollowersElementWithUsername (username) {
  const followersElement = document.querySelectorAll('a[href="/' + username + '/following/"]')[0]
  if (!followersElement) throw new Error('No followers element was found')
  return followersElement
}

const friends = new Set(['user1', 'user2'])
const unfollows = {}
let tries = 0
let globalCount = 0
const hasMoreToLoad = ul => ul.childElementCount !== globalCount || ul.children[ul.childElementCount - 1].firstChild.getAttribute('data-visualcompletion') === 'loading-state'
const populateUnfollowsPool = () => {
  const ul = document.querySelectorAll('ul')[1].firstChild
  const lis = [...ul.querySelectorAll('li')]
    .map(li => ({ button: li.querySelector('button'), name: (li.querySelector('a') || { href: '' }).href.split('/').slice(-2)[0] }))
    .filter(({ button, name }) => button && button.textContent === 'Following' && name && !friends.has(name) && !unfollows[name])
  lis.forEach(({ button, name }) => (unfollows[name] = { button, name }))
  globalCount = ul.childElementCount
  ul.children[globalCount - 1].scrollIntoView(true)
  console.log('elements', globalCount, 'unfollows', Object.keys(unfollows).length, 'tries', tries)
  setTimeout(() => hasMoreToLoad(ul) || tries++ < 3 ? populateUnfollowsPool() : finishedCollection(), randInt(848, 2004))
}
setTimeout(populateUnfollowsPool, 3000)

async function finishedCollection () {
  console.log('!!! Collection Finished')
  const toUnfollow = Object.values(unfollows)
  const total = toUnfollow.length
  for (let i = 0; i < total; i++) {
    const { button, name } = toUnfollow[i]
    button.scrollIntoView(true)
    button.click()
    await sleep(randInt(50, 200))
    const unfollow = [...document.querySelectorAll('button')].find(button => button.textContent === 'Unfollow')
    unfollow && unfollow.click()
    console.log('Unfollowed ', name, (i / total * 100).toFixed(2), '%')
    await sleep(i % 8 ? randInt(120, 800) : randInt(1, 10) * 60 * 1000)
  }
}

I'm seeing the following error running this in console while viewing this url on desktop:

https://www.instagram.com/paulchrisluke/following/

You're on the wrong page.
It should be just your home page profile

thank you for the rapid response! on home page Uncaught Error: No title to get username from

Turn off mobile view. This script is intended for the web view. By home page I mean the account home page.

so instagram.com/username

8a2b7db607f6.js:79 POST https://www.instagram.com/logging/falco net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT

Network add blocker? Or adblocker?

Are you able to add a way to set the unfollows pool instead of calculating it? I have 5k+ accounts to unfollow. I want to do batches of however many unfollows Insta allows per day (or per hour?); not sure on the exact number.

Unfortunately this is a crappy script that manipulates the dom. What you want to be doing ideally is to interact with the API directly.

That would allow you to break the pipeline in two. All you will need to know is the account id. The rest could be recreated by the session things like token and other instagram required params.

Problems with proprietary API's is that they change often and it can be quite hard to keep up with the reverse engineering. I'm guessing this is why nobody made a chrome extension for this already or an npm package.

There is one here that queries all followers here
But have a look for the project's active issues

(Might I suggest you create a new account instead? @Nomark13)

Can you make a script to find all who didn't follow back, I just need a list so that I can put that list in another script where I can easily unfollow all, or just usernames are also enough, or if you know anything regarding this please let me know.

Gathers accounts perfectly but only unfollows one, then slowly goes through accounts with the 0.01% 0.02% etc but doesn't unfollow the rest. Or sometimes it has this error linked above. Is it a problem on my end

Interesting. I've for some reason cannot access instagram from the computer anymore because password reset page does not work for me and I can't actually try the script anymore ...

It doesn't look like a serious problem though. Yeah, Instagram Will be slow 😅 what's worse is their rate limiting is not quite easy to pin down anymore.

Since there is a lot of people having the same issue, I might look into the API itself to speed up this unfollow process.

It's now unfollowing correctly after a few refreshes and script restarts, the api limit keep getting hit but after 5 mins it'll unfollow a couple more so it's ok!

Thanks for making this.

keep getting
`Vev1H1eefJG.js?_nc_x=Ij3Wp8lg5Kz:59 ErrorUtils caught an error:

Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'scrollIntoView')

Subsequent non-fatal errors won't be logged; see https://fburl.com/debugjs.`

Adaption here: https://gist.github.com/mikeknapp/788cb26da096161ef3fff1015d947405