How to analyze your Instagram DMs
Instagram has no chat export that WholeThing reads, so Instagram DMs come in as screenshots. Take them as you scroll through the conversation, with a little overlap, and pick up to 20. WholeThing reads the text on your phone and counts what’s visible: who sent more, who writes longer, the words you both use. Screenshots carry no times.
How a quick read works
WholeThing is coming soon to iPhone. It reads a conversation two ways: a full WhatsApp export, or screenshots from any messaging app. For Instagram, it’s screenshots. The app calls this a quick read, and it’s honest about what that means.
- 1In WholeThing, choose Screenshots, then Choose screenshots. The picker shows the screenshots in your photo library, and you can pick up to 20 at once.
- 2The app reads the words off each picture on your phone, with Apple’s own text recognition.
- 3It works out who said what from where each message sits. Instagram, like most messaging apps, puts your messages on the right and theirs on the left. If the pictures don’t make that clear, it asks: “Which side is you?”
- 4Messages that appear in two overlapping screenshots are counted once.
- 5You see a receipt: how many screenshots, how many messages. Then you say who the person is to you and what you’re curious about, and the report opens.
It needs about 12 messages, with both of you in them, before it can say anything specific. More screenshots give it more to count.
How to take good screenshots of an Instagram chat
- Open the chat and scroll to where you want to start. Close the keyboard so more of the conversation fits on screen.
- Take a screenshot. On an iPhone with Face ID, press the side button and volume up together. With a Home button, press the Home button and the side button.
- Scroll by a bit less than a screen and take the next one. Some overlap is fine; each message is only counted once.
- Keep both of you in frame. A quick read needs messages from both sides. If every picture shows only one person, it can’t compare anything.
- Keep the text sharp and whole bubbles in view. Half a bubble at the edge of the screen is half a message.
- Use ordinary screenshots, not a Full Page capture, so they land in your photo library where the picker looks.
Twenty screenshots is the most one read takes. Pick the stretch of the conversation you’re actually curious about.
What a quick read can show
Everything on a quick-read card is counted from the words in your screenshots, and every card ends with the same line: “From these screenshots.” Depending on how much there is to read, that can be:
- Who sent more of the messages you captured, and by how much.
- Who writes longer messages, when there are enough of them to compare.
- Your [shared language](page:shared-language): a word you both keep using, if it comes up often enough on both sides.
- What you talk about most, when there’s enough text to tell.
Each finding has its own minimum, so a short set of screenshots may only have enough for one or two. WholeThing leaves a finding out rather than stretch a handful of messages into a claim.
What it can’t show
Screenshots carry no times WholeThing uses, only the order the messages appear in. So anything about when, how quickly or how things changed is off the table:
- who texts first after a quiet spell,
- reply times, or whether they changed,
- the week things changed,
- the longest silence,
- when you talk during the day.
It also only sees words. Photos, reels and voice messages aren’t counted, and nothing outside your screenshots exists as far as the report is concerned. Twenty screenshots of one good week say something about that week, not about the whole relationship, and nothing about what either of you meant. If the conversation also lives on WhatsApp, a full export is the deeper read.
Does Instagram tell them you took a screenshot?
Instagram’s help pages describe a screenshot notification in two places. In vanish mode and with disappearing messages, the other person gets a notification if Instagram detects a screenshot. And screenshots of a disappearing photo or video you’ve received are disabled.
For an ordinary chat, Instagram’s help pages don’t describe any screenshot notification. Messages sent in vanish mode are also gone once you leave the chat, so an ordinary chat that stays put is the one to read.
What about Instagram’s own data download?
Instagram does let you export a copy of your information, messages included, from Meta Account settings under Your information and permissions. It can take a while: Instagram says the export link may take up to 30 days to arrive.
WholeThing doesn’t read that file. The only export it reads is a WhatsApp chat export; any other file is turned away. For Instagram, screenshots are the way in.
What happens to your screenshots
The pictures never leave your phone. WholeThing reads the words off them on the device. From there it’s handled like any chat: every number is counted on the phone, and to write the sentences on the cards, the counted facts and short excerpts are sent to a language model with phone numbers, emails and links removed first. Those sentences are kept on WholeThing’s server for 30 days, tied to a fingerprint of the screenshots rather than to you. No account, no ads. The full picture is here.
Questions
- How many screenshots can I use?
- Up to 20 in one read. It needs about 12 messages from the two of you before it can say anything specific.
- Does it work with group chats?
- No. WholeThing reads conversations between two people, with one of you on each side of the screen.
- Can it tell me their reply time on Instagram?
- Not from screenshots. They carry no times WholeThing uses, so reply times, who texts first and silences need a full WhatsApp export.
- Does it read the photos and reels we sent each other?
- No. It reads text only. Pictures, reels and voice messages aren’t counted in a quick read.
- Are my screenshots uploaded?
- No. The text is read on your phone and the pictures never leave it.