How to Manage Multiple Instagram Accounts

Instagram is a popular social network for sharing photos and videos, but not all photos and videos belong on the same account. If you want to stick to a theme and target specific followers, you might want to consider creating multiple Instagram accounts.

You can use your additional Instagram accounts alongside your original one—by switching between them easily. This means you don't have to sign out and sign back into the app every time you want to access a different account.

Why Create Multiple Instagram Accounts?

You might want multiple Instagram accounts if:

You want to keep your personal account private while sharing other content publicly.
You already have an existing personal account but want to start one for a business or brand.
You have content for a specific interest that you want to share separately from your personal account—such as photography, makeup tutorials, fashion, drawing, fitness, etc.

Having multiple accounts connected to your Instagram app makes it fast and convenient to switch between them so you can check them regularly throughout the day. All it takes is a couple of taps to switch.

You can add up to five Instagram accounts to the Instagram app.

How to Create Another Account in the Instagram App

Once you add an Instagram account to the app, you'll always stay signed in (until you manually sign out of it).

The following instructions can be followed for both the Instagram iOS app and the Instagram Android app. Images are provided from the iOS app.

Open the Instagram app on your mobile device and if necessary, sign into any one of your accounts.
Navigate to your profile by tapping your profile picture icon in the bottom menu.
Tap the menu icon in the top right corner of your profile.
Tap Settings at the bottom.
Scroll down to the Logins section and tap Add Account.
Now you have two options:

Enter your login details for an existing Instagram account and tap Log In; or
If you only have one account and still need to create a second one, tap Sign Up at the bottom of the screen and follow the instructions to create your second account.

Once successfully logged in to the second account, the Instagram app will automatically switch to it. Don't worry—you're still signed into your original account.

If you use the Instagram app on more than one mobile device, you will need to add your accounts to each device separately. They will not automatically be added everywhere if you add them to the app on just one device.

How to Switch Between Multiple Instagram Accounts on the App

Now that you've added at least one additional account to your Instagram app (so you have two or more), you can learn how to switch between them.

The following instructions assume that you already have at least two accounts connected to your Instagram app.

Navigate to your profile by tapping your profile picture icon in the bottom menu.
You should notice now that the Instagram logo at the top has been replaced with your username and a down arrow to the left of it. Tap it.
A menu with the current account you're using will be displayed at the top (along with details like followers) and your other account beneath it. Tap your other account to automatically switch to it.

There's an option to add more accounts from this menu. Tap + Add Account to add another. Remember that you can only add up to five accounts.
Any time you want to switch between accounts, simply repeat steps 1 to 3.

How to Switch Between Multiple Instagram Accounts on the Web

You can switch between accounts on Instagram.com in a web browser like Google Chrome, which remembers your login details via cookies.

Navigate to Instagram.com in your Chrome web browser.
If you're not signed into one of your accounts already, select Log in at the bottom and enter your details, then click the blue Log in button.
To add/switch to another account, you'll have to log out. Select the Profile icon in the top-right menu to you to go to your profile and then select the Settings icon (it looks like a gear) and click Log Out.
If you're using a web browser with cookies enabled for the Instagram website (such as Chrome), you should notice that the Instagram main login page has remembered your login details and now displays your first account's profile picture with an button to log in.

You can select the Continue as [username] button to log in or alternatively select Switch accounts to log into your other one.

If you choose to switch accounts, Instagram might also remember your login details for that account, so all you'll have to do is click the blue Log in button.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 any time you want to add/switch to a different account.

Posting to Multiple Instagram Accounts at Once

If you want to share a post on more than one of your accounts, you can do it all at once so you don't have to manually post to each one.

Once you get to the caption and other details tab of a new post, look for the Post to Other Accounts section (beneath the Add Location section). Here you can turn buttons On or Off for all the other accounts you have connected.

Tap to turn the button On so that it's blue if you want to post to that account. Or leave it Off so that it's gray if you don't want to post to that account.

If you turn on posting to multiple accounts, you might not be able to post to social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr). This is because the Instagram account you're posting to must be associated with your other social networking accounts.

Managing Notifications for Multiple Instagram Accounts

You can turn notifications on or off for each different account so you only receive notifications for the ones you want.

Go to your profile, tap the Menu icon > Settings > Notifications to customize your notifications. You can pause all of them if you want or receive ones for:

Posts, stories and comments
Following and followers
Direct messages
Live and IGTV
From Instagram

Two screenshots of the Instagram app for iOS.

Remember to do this for each account you have if you want to receive specific notifications for them (or turn them off).

Logging Out of Multiple Instagram Accounts

You can log out of any of your connected accounts separately or log out of all accounts at once. This will disconnect them from the app so they no longer appear in the list of accounts when you tap your username on your profile tab.

Go to your profile, tap the Menu icon > Settings and scroll down to Logins. Tap Log Out of [username] to log out of just that account or select Log Out of All Accounts to log out of all the accounts you've connected to the Instagram app.