About StoriesMask

Why we built it

Instagram reports every story view to the person who posted it. Usually that is harmless, but everyday life is full of moments when you would rather glance without announcing yourself: a shop you are comparing, someone you have lost touch with, a creator whose work you like. We built a tool that lets you look at public stories without that glance becoming a notification, and without ever asking for a password. Hence the name: a mask you put on before you watch.

What we believe

Public is public. When an account shares stories with everyone on the internet, watching them anonymously is a fair thing to do. Private is private. We never open private profiles and never will.

You are not the product. No login, no record of what you search, no data sold to anyone. Display ads pay the bills and that is the whole business model.

What StoriesMask does

It opens the live stories, highlights, posts and reels of public Instagram accounts, saves them at original quality, shows the profile picture at full size, lists the accounts tagged in a story and shows a profile's most recent followers. Everything runs in the browser, on any device, free.

What it does not do

It does not open private profiles, does not reveal who viewed your story, does not resurrect expired stories, and never posts, follows, likes or messages. It reads, nothing more.

Who runs it

A small group of web developers who also run other free media tools. We read the support inbox ourselves. Because the site relies on Instagram's public endpoints, a search can break for a while when Instagram changes something on its end; we usually have it back within the day.

Contact

Bug reports, questions and takedown requests go through the contact page. For removing content, see the DMCA page.