How to Search Instagram for Tags and Users

Instagram search is located on the Explore tab within the app, which can be accessed by tapping the magnifying glass icon in the bottom menu. It should be the second icon from the left, between the home feed and the camera tab.

You should see a search box at the very top that says Search. Tap the search to bring up your mobile device's keyboard.

As soon as you sign in, you should see Instagram's search field at the top of your home feed.

Once you've tapped inside the Instagram search field, you'll be able to type in your search. You should notice four different tabs that appear at the top: Top, Accounts, Tags, and Places.

To search for a tag, you can search for it with or without the hashtag symbol (such as #photooftheday or photooftheday). Once you've typed in your tag search term, you can either choose the result you were looking for from the automatic list of top suggestions or tap the Tags tab to filter out all the other results that aren't tags.

Instagram.com doesn't have the same four search result tabs that the app does, making it a little harder to filter results. When you type in your tag search term, however, you'll see a list of suggested results appear in a dropdown list — some of which will be tags (marked by the hashtag (#) symbol and others that will be user accounts (marked by their profile photos). 

After you tap on a tag from the Tags tab on the app or click on a suggested tag from the dropdown menu on Instagram.com you'll be shown a grid of photos and videos that have been tagged and posted by Instagram users in real time.

A selection of top posts, which are posts with the most likes and comments, will be shown in the default tab on the app and at the very top on Instagram.com. You can switch to the Recent tab on the app to see the most recent posts for that tag in the app or simply scroll down past the first nine posts on Instagram.com.

In addition to searching for posts with specific tags, you can can also use Instagram search to find specific user accounts to follow.

In the search field on the Explore tab, type in the username or first name of a user. Like the tag search, Instagram will give you a list of top suggestions as you type. Either tap the result from the suggested results or tap the Accounts tab to filter out all the other results that aren't user accounts.

In the search field on Instagram.com, type in the username or first name of a user and select a result from the dropdown list of user suggestions marked by a profile icon. Unlike the tag search, which displays a full page of post results, you can only select user results from the dropdown list.