How to cancel pending Instagram follow requests

Why

When you follow a private account, the request stays pending until they accept it or you withdraw it. Requests nobody answers pile up over months, and Instagram counts them toward your following total, so a long backlog can stop you from following anyone new.

Growbot used to load this list with one click. Instagram has since stopped allowing that, so the Load Pending Follow Requests button now only shows a notice with a link. The list is still available through Instagram's own data download, and Growbot can read that file directly.

How to use it

Step 1: download the list from Instagram

1. Go to instagram.com/download/request. This opens Download your information in Instagram's Accounts Center.
2. Choose to download to your device, pick your account, and select only Followers and following. You do not need the rest of your data.
3. Set the format to JSON. Growbot cannot read the HTML version.
4. Submit the request. Instagram notifies you when the files are ready, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.
5. Download and unzip the files. The list you need is pending_follow_requests.json, usually inside a followers_and_following folder.

Instagram renames these menus from time to time, so the exact wording may differ slightly.

Step 2: load the file into Growbot

1. Open the Accounts Queue and start with an empty queue, because loading a file adds to whatever is already there. To clear it, use Select... → Select All, then Remove selected.
2. Open Load Accounts and click Load Queue. If Growbot asks where to load from, choose Load queue from file.
3. Select pending_follow_requests.json. Growbot loads the usernames and tells you the queue needs Get More Data before it can be used.
4. Open the Process Queue menu, choose Get More Data, and click Process Queue (choose Run Now if asked). Growbot looks up each account so it can act on it, which takes one Instagram request per account.

Step 3: withdraw the requests

1. If you sent some of these requests by hand rather than through Growbot, open Settings → Unfollowing Options and uncheck Don't unfollow people followed outside of Growbot. Otherwise Growbot skips them. Save your whitelist before changing this.
2. Open the Process Queue menu, choose Unfollow, and click Process Queue.
3. Choose Run Now. Unfollowing an account you have only requested withdraws the request.
4. Do not use Schedule Actions for this. Scheduled unfollows skip accounts you are not following yet, and a pending request is not a follow, so every one of them would be skipped.
5. Watch the Log as Growbot works through the list with your normal delay between accounts.

Tips

• The file is a snapshot from the day you requested it. If someone accepted your request after that, you now follow them, and this pass will unfollow them. Use a fresh download, and whitelist anyone you want to keep.
• Withdrawing requests is activity on your account, just like unfollowing. If you have hundreds, spread them over several days: before running Get More Data, keep only today's batch and use Remove selected on the rest. Another day, load the file again and remove the ones you already did.
• If you would rather not send requests to private accounts at all, uncheck Private Accounts on the Filters tab before following. Growbot then skips private accounts.
• Pending requests count toward Instagram's cap on how many accounts you can follow, so clearing them also helps if follows start failing with a message about a maximum.