Social media has changed the way we think. When thinking about someone you know offline (in person), their face is generally the first thing to pop up in your head. Naturally, the face of the person represents their identity in your head. However, things are quite different online.
The thoughts of the person you know virtually rarely come as memories of their face. They come as their photos. Most of the time, you remember the person with their name and profile picture. It won’t be wrong to say that profile pictures are in social media what faces are in the real world.
Unlike faces, however, profile pictures can change quite often. You may open your Instagram one day and see that someone you follow has changed their profile picture.
But what if you liked their old profile picture? You would want to see it again and maybe even save it on your phone. But does Instagram let you view someone’s old profile pictures? Let’s find out.
Can You View Old Instagram Profile Pictures?
Instagram is an interesting platform. In fact, it is one of the most interesting platforms ever. It was so interesting that Facebook– now Meta– bought it before it became more interesting than Facebook.
Since Instagram is an old member of the Facebook family, many people think that the two platforms are more or less the same. But in spite of all the similarities, Instagram is different from Facebook in subtle as well as advanced ways.
The difference is also obvious from how the two platforms deal with old profile pictures. On Facebook, all your profile pictures– past and current– are saved automatically in an album named Profile pictures. So, it’s a matter of a few taps before you see the old profile pictures of your friends.
Old Instagram Profile Picture Viewer
Old Instagram Profile Picture Viewer by Staiira is an online hassle-free utility that enables you to see other’s old Instagram profile pictures. Just enter the username whose old profile picture you want to see and click the submit button. That’s all you need to do! you will have access to their old Instagram profile pictures.
How to View Previous/Old Instagram Profile Picture History (Instagram Old Profile Picture Download)
Before we tell you how you can view old Instagram profile photos, let’s be clear about one thing. Most of these methods are useful for finding the old Instagram profile pictures of others.
If you want to view your old Instagram profile pictures, you don’t need to do all these things, as you likely already have them saved in your phone’s gallery. Just look for an album named Instagram in your device gallery; you will find all the photos you have uploaded to Instagram. We will talk about this in detail in Method 3.
Now let us tell you how to view someone’s old Instagram profile pictures.
1. Google Cache
You don’t think Google can help you find someone’s old Instagram profile pics, do you? Perhaps it’s time to give the possibility a thought.
The Google image database contains a very, very huge number of images from across the web. These images are not only images from blogs and other websites but also from social media accounts. Therefore, when you search for a person’s name or username on Google, you will see many images of random people.
Google fetches these images from social media platforms like Instagram. While these images are mostly updated in real-time, some are from cached versions of old social media profile pages. This means there is a chance to find someone’s old Instagram photos right from Google! Here’s how:
Step 1: Open the Chrome browser and go to Google Image search: https://images.google.com.
Step 2: Enter the following text in the search bar: [Username] Instagram.
Here, replace [username] with the Instagram username of the person whose photos you want to see.
Step 3: In the search results, you will see several images related to the username. Look for any old Instagram profile picture in the results.
You can download the image to your device once you find it in the results.
2. Wayback Machine: Internet Archive
Want to see the old Instagram profile pictures of some popular people? There is a super-cool website that can come to your rescue.
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is an amazing tool that can take you back virtually in time! Wayback Machine is a unique online tool that can show you an old version of any webpage. This means you can see how a particular page on the internet looked days, months, or years ago!
Follow these steps to check someone’s old Instagram profile picture using Wayback Machine.
Step 1: Open Instagram from a web browser and go to the profile of the concerned person.
Step 2: Copy the URL of the profile page of the user. It is in the following format: https://www.instagram.com/[username].
Step 3: Note down the username and go to https://web.archive.org. Enter the correct username of the person in place of [username].
Step 4: Paste the copied URL in the search bar and hit Enter.
Step 5: You will see a list of snapshots captured for that URL. Tap on an old snapshot to see how the web page looked at the given time.
Step 6: If you find an old snapshot of the profile page, you will also see the old profile picture of the user.
3. Instagram Save Original Posts/Photos feature
Here’s how you can check whether this feature is enabled:
Step 1: Open the Instagram app and head to your profile tab.
Step 2: Tap on the three lines in the top-right corner, and go to Settings.
Step 3: Select the Account option from the Settings screen. Go to Original Posts from the Account page.
Step 4: Check whether the Save original posts option is enabled. Also, enable Save posted photos.
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