Instagram data viewer
Open the file from Instagram’s Download your information — the ZIP, the unzipped folder, or the JSON files inside it — online, in this browser tab: your followers, following, likes, comments, saved posts and messages become tables you can search and download as CSV — compare followers and following to see who doesn’t follow you back, or find one message in a chat. Free, no account; the file is never uploaded.
Drop your Instagram export here — the ZIP as you downloaded it (JSON format), the unzipped folder, or the .json files inside — or
Nothing is uploaded: the file is read by JavaScript in this browser tab and stays on your device. Photos and videos in the export are skipped; only the .json files are read. Drop it anywhere on the page.
How to view your Instagram data (JSON export)
- Request the file in Accounts Center: in the Instagram app, Profile → Menu ☰ → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information (older versions say Download your information) → Create export, pick your profile, then Export to device. Instagram: “From here, you can choose specific info to export, select a date range, format, the notification email and media quality.” Choose JSON as the format, then Start export (Instagram Help, Review and export a copy of your Instagram information).
- Wait for the email. Instagram: “It may take up to 30 days for us to email you an export link.” When it arrives, “you’ll have 4 days to export your information in the Available downloads section” of the same tool.
- Drop the downloaded ZIP on this page, or click Choose file. If you have already unzipped it, click Choose folder or drop the folder: the viewer reads the .json files and skips the photos and videos.
- Every list in the export gets a tab: click one, type in Find in this list to filter it, click a column header to sort, and click Download CSV or Copy for Excel / Sheets. The Summary tab has the charts, counts and dates.
What is in an Instagram data export
Instagram lets you choose “specific info to export” or everything, and the export you receive is a ZIP of folders — your_instagram_activity, connections, personal_information, logged_information, ads_information and others — with one .json file per list and a folder of media files. The viewer does not assume a fixed layout: it opens every .json file, finds every list of records in it and shows each one as its own tab, named after the file (followers_1.json becomes Followers; a list split over several numbered files is joined into one tab). In exports we have tested this covers followers, following, pending and recent follow requests, blocked accounts, liked posts and comments, your comments, saved posts, story likes, posts and reels you have seen, ads seen, searches, login and logout activity, profile changes, the profile fields and the direct messages — one tab per chat, named after the chat, with the sender, time and text of each message. A Threads export, requested from the same Accounts Center in JSON format, has the same layout and opens here the same way.
Two things in the file need translation, and the viewer does both. Instagram writes times as Unix timestamps (seconds since 1970); the tables show them as dates and times in UTC, so they can differ from your local time by your time zone. And Instagram writes emoji and accented letters as escaped bytes (“é” for é), which look broken in a text editor; the viewer decodes them, so names, captions and messages read as they were typed. Photos and videos are in the export as files: the tables show their paths inside the ZIP, and the viewer never fetches anything from Instagram.
Is my Instagram data uploaded?
No. The file is opened and read by JavaScript in your browser; there is no server that receives it, nothing is stored, and the page sets no cookies. A ZIP is unpacked in the browser too, using the browser’s own decompression, and only its .json entries are read — the media files inside stay untouched. You can check this yourself: open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab, drop a file, and watch that no request carries it. The site’s host, GitHub Pages, logs the IP address of every visitor for security, like any web server — details on the privacy page. Because the file stays with you, the viewer works on a phone as well as on a laptop, and keeps working offline once the page has loaded.
Summary tab: counts, dates and busiest hours
The Summary tab draws two small charts for the largest dated list (often the posts you have seen, or the messages of your busiest chat) — records by hour of the day and by weekday, in UTC as the timestamps in the file — and below them lists every section with its number of records and its first and last date. It is an overview you can screenshot — but the point of the page is the lists themselves: the followers and following you can export as CSV and compare in a spreadsheet, the comments you wrote, the searches you made, each chat you can search by word.
JSON, not HTML: which format to request
When you request the export, Instagram offers two formats. HTML is a set of web pages you open in a browser on their own — they are readable, but there are no tables to search or export, and this viewer does not read them. JSON is what Instagram calls the “machine readable” format: one .json file per list, which is what this page turns into tables. If you already have an HTML export, request it again and choose JSON; Instagram says you can always request a new one. Media quality only changes the size of the download, since the viewer ignores the photos and videos anyway.
Facts checked on 25 September 2026 against Instagram’s help page “Review and export a copy of your Instagram information”: help.instagram.com/181231772500920; see also “Information available to download from your Instagram profile”, help.instagram.com/6947552812036899. The layout of the JSON export is described from files we have tested; Meta changes folder and field names over time, which is why the viewer reads whatever lists it finds. DataExportViewer is an independent tool, not affiliated with Instagram or Meta.
FAQ
How do I download my Instagram data?
In the Instagram app: Profile → Menu ☰ → Accounts Center → Your information and permissions → Export your information (or Download your information) → Create export → choose your profile → Export to device → choose the information, a date range, the format (pick JSON) and media quality → Start export. Instagram says “it may take up to 30 days for us to email you an export link”, and once the export is ready “you’ll have 4 days to export your information in the Available downloads section”. Then drop the ZIP on this page.
HTML or JSON — which format should I choose for the Instagram download?
JSON. It is the “machine readable” format: one .json file per list, which this viewer turns into searchable tables with CSV export. The HTML format is a set of web pages that open in a browser by themselves; there is nothing to search or export in them, and this page does not read them. If you already have an HTML export, request the download again with JSON selected.
Is my Instagram data uploaded to a server?
No. The ZIP or .json files are read by JavaScript in your browser; no server receives them, nothing is stored, and the page sets no cookies. To check, open your browser’s developer tools on the Network tab while you drop the file: no request carries it. The host, GitHub Pages, logs visitor IP addresses for security — see the privacy page.
Can I see my Instagram direct messages in the export?
Yes, if you included messages when you requested the export. They are in the messages folder, one subfolder per chat with a message_1.json (and message_2.json and so on for long chats). The viewer shows one tab per chat, named after the chat, with the sender, time and text of every message, and joins the numbered parts into one list; you can search a chat by word and download it as CSV. Instagram handles end-to-end encrypted chats separately — see its help page “Download your data from end-to-end encrypted messages”.
How do I see who doesn’t follow me back?
Open the Followers tab and the Following tab — both come from the connections folder of the export — sort either by clicking a column header if you like, and download each as CSV. In Excel or Google Sheets, a lookup between the two username columns (for example COUNTIF) marks the accounts you follow that do not follow you. The viewer shows the lists as they are in the file and does not compute the difference itself, so nothing about your account is sent anywhere.
Why are the times different from what I saw in the app?
Instagram writes every time in the export as a Unix timestamp — a number of seconds since 1 January 1970, with no time zone. The viewer converts those numbers to dates and times in UTC, so they can be a few hours off from your local time; the difference is exactly your time zone offset. The Summary charts by hour and weekday use the same UTC times.
Emoji and accented letters look broken in the file — why are they fine here?
Instagram’s JSON writes non-English letters and emoji as escaped bytes, one escape per byte, so “café” appears as “café” in a text editor and an emoji as four escapes. The viewer puts the bytes back together, so names, captions and messages read as typed. Nothing else in the text is changed.
The ZIP is huge because of photos and videos — do I have to wait for it?
Not for the viewer: it reads only the .json entries of the ZIP and never opens the media files, so even a multi-gigabyte export loads quickly. If you have already unzipped it, drop the folder (or click Choose folder) and the same happens. If the archive is larger than 4 GB the ZIP64 format is not supported in the browser: unzip it and drop the folder. To make future downloads smaller, request the export without media or with lower media quality — the tables are the same.
What is the difference between this viewer and an Instagram Wrapped site?
A wrapped-style site turns the export into a few yearly statistics, and most of them ask you to upload the file. This page shows the lists themselves — every follower, like, comment, saved post, search and chat — lets you search inside them and download each as a CSV, and its Summary tab adds the counts, the date range and the busiest hours and weekdays. Everything runs in your browser, so the file is not sent anywhere to be analysed.
How to view an Instagram JSON export on a phone?
Open this page on the phone, tap Choose file and pick the ZIP where your phone saved the download. The lists appear as tabs; tables scroll sideways, and Find in this list filters the rows. Download CSV saves a file that opens in Google Sheets, Excel or Numbers on the phone. Nothing is uploaded, so it works on mobile data and offline once the page has loaded.