How to Temporarily Deactivate Your Instagram Account (And Reactivate it)
Deactivating your Instagram account means preventing others from seeing your posts and seeing your profile, without having to delete your account.
Deactivating your Instagram account is helpful in many scenarios, and the best part is that it’s easy to do. When you deactivate your account, you prevent other people from taking your username, and there won’t be any need for backing up all of your posts either because they are safely stored in your profile until you choose to reactivate your account again.
Before we begin, note that you cannot temporarily disable your Instagram account from within the Instagram app. You have to do it from your desktop.
How to deactivate your Instagram account
1. Visit Instagram.com
Start by going to Instagram’s website Instagram.com If you are logged in, you will come to your regular feed. If you aren’t logged in, make sure you do so by typing in username and password and clicking log in.
2. Go to your profile
To go to your profile, tap on the profile icon in the top right corner.
3. Click “Edit Profile”
When you click on the profile icon, you’ll see a button saying “Edit profile”. Click it.
4. Disable your account
Scroll down to the bottom of the list that appears and click “Disable my account”
5. Indicate a reason
Before you can disable your account, you must give Instagram a reason to why you are disabling your account. Choose the reason that is true to you.
6. Enter your password
To verify that it is actually the owner of the account that is disabling the account, and to ensure that it hasn’t been hacked, you will need to type in your password.
7.Disable your account
Click on the button that says “Temporarily disable account”. it’s a big red button at the bottom of the page that you can’t miss.
8. Click OK
When you’ve selected the option to disable your account, you’ll get asked a second time if you really want to do it. Click OK to confirm.
Account disabled!
What happens when you deactivate your Instagram account?
When you’ve disabled your account, you will be logged out of it from all the devices you are logged in to that account with. When your account is deactivated, people won’t be able to search for it, and no one will be able to visit and view your account. This means that your account will be completely hidden for no one to see until you reactivate it again.
Note that while your account will be hidden immediately, archived posts that are displayed on Google might take up to several weeks to appear.
Restoring your account
You can re-activate your account at any time by simply logging back in. If you’ve just disabled your account and want to reactivate it shortly thereafter, it’s not sure that you will be able to. Instagram must first complete the process of deactivating your account, and this usually takes a few hours. Sometimes up to 24 hours.
To deactivate your account, log in to Instagram by using your username and password like you normally do. You can reactivate your account from either a desktop or your smartphone.
