Why does Instagram stop working when open in multiple tabs in Chrome

December 26, 2022 9:42 PM

I like to catch up on the Instagram users that I follow, and I have lately been doing it by viewing multiple users at once. So have many tabs open for each. And I use the shortcut key to switch tabs. But when I have a lot of Instagram tabs open, the site becomes unresponsive, which is not how other sites work.

I know this is niche and might sound odd. But I don't really care. Is there something special about Instagram that makes it do this? Is there a way around it?

posted by ggp88 to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Rather than tabs you could try running each in a seperate private window. This might prevent the different instances from talking to each other.
posted by Mitheral at 12:59 AM on December 27, 2022

I couldn't tell you why Instagram is like this, but I can point to a way around it:

https://inflact.com/profiles/instagram-viewer/ -- it's basically an "Instagram stalker", in that you only need to know the IG account name, and do not need to be logged into IG or even have an account yourself.

You should have uBlock or similar ad-blockers installed before visiting the link, for the best experience.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 10:24 AM on December 27, 2022 [3 favorites]

If you use Firefox (or are willing to use Firefox for this purpose) there's an official extension called Facebook Container that isolates Facebook/Instagram tabs and tabs that contain Facebook/Instagram trackers. This would solve your problem. If you don't use Firefox, a private browser window will have to do.
posted by ourobouros at 2:45 PM on December 27, 2022 [1 favorite]