IG Sanitize

Bulk-delete your Instagram comment history from the "Your Activity" page. Reduces your OSINT footprint by wiping years of comments in one run. Paste into your browser console and walk away.

Part of a digital hygiene toolkit. Think of it like EasyOptOuts or DeleteMe, but for the data Instagram already has about you — specifically, the public commentary that builds a profile of your interests, opinions, and associations over time.

Why this exists

Every comment you leave on Instagram is a data point. It shows up on the post, in your activity log, in Instagram's recommendation engine, and in the databases of anyone scraping the platform. Intelligence X, Maltego, and similar OSINT tools index Instagram comments. So do marketing firms and data brokers.

Your comments reveal:

• Political leanings and opinions on current events
• Accounts you interact with (and by extension, their communities)
• Your writing style, vocabulary, and patterns of speech
• Geographic clues (local news, regional slang)
• Timestamps and activity patterns

Deleting comments doesn't make you invisible. But it removes one of the easiest surface-level datasets that anyone — from a stalker to a prospective employer to a data broker — can scrape without any special access.

This script targets the one category Instagram actually lets you bulk-delete: comments. Likes, story replies, and search history are separate and need their own cleanup (see Roadmap).

How to use

Option A: Console paste (simple)

1. Go to https://www.instagram.com/your_activity/interactions/comments/ (log in first)
2. Open your browser's developer console:
   • Chrome/Edge: Ctrl+Shift+J (Windows) or Cmd+Option+J (Mac)
   • Firefox: Ctrl+Shift+K (Windows) or Cmd+Option+K (Mac)
3. Copy the entire contents of ig-sanitize.js
4. Paste it into the console and press Enter
5. Leave the tab open. The script logs progress as it works.

Option B: Python CDP runner (recommended for large histories)

If you have hundreds or thousands of comments, the Python runner is more reliable. It controls the deletion loop from outside the browser, so it can reload pages, handle rate limits, and resume where it left off across restarts.

pip install websockets

# Launch Chrome with remote debugging (close Chrome first)
# Windows:
Start-Process chrome -ArgumentList '--remote-debugging-port=9222', \
    '--user-data-dir=C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data', \
    'https://www.instagram.com/your_activity/interactions/comments/'

# macOS:
/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome \
    --remote-debugging-port=9222 \
    'https://www.instagram.com/your_activity/interactions/comments/'

python ig-sanitize-runner.py

Progress saves to localStorage after every 10 batches. If the script dies (rate limit, browser crash, power outage), just rerun it and it picks up where it left off.

Batch 1 deleted (~3 comments total)
Batch 2 deleted (~6 comments total)
...
Batch 145 deleted (~435 comments total)
All comments deleted! Total batches: 145

The tab can't be closed while it runs, but your screen can lock and you can switch to other tabs. Just don't close the Instagram tab. Closing it kills the script.

Configuration

const DELETION_BATCH_SIZE = 3            // Comments per batch
const DELAY_BETWEEN_ACTIONS_MS = 1000    // Pause between major steps (1s)
const DELAY_BETWEEN_CHECKBOX_CLICKS_MS = 300  // Pause between checking boxes
const MAX_RETRIES = 60                   // How long to wait for page loads (60s)
const RATE_LIMIT_COOLDOWN_MS = 30000     // Cooldown when rate limited (30s)
const MAX_CONSECUTIVE_ERRORS = 3         // Bail after 3 consecutive failures

Smaller batches and longer delays = safer but slower. The defaults are conservative.

Rate limiting

Instagram will eventually show "something went wrong" if you delete too many comments too fast. The script handles this:

1. Error detection — checks the page text for Instagram's error messages before each batch
2. Auto-cooldown — pauses for 30 seconds when an error is detected, then retries
3. Periodic pauses — adds a 3-second delay every 50 batches
4. Graceful bail — stops after consecutive failures and logs how far it got

In practice, Instagram starts throttling around 1,000-1,200 deletions in a single session. The page stops loading comments entirely until the throttle clears (usually a few hours). This is an account-level rate limit, not something the script can bypass.

If the script stops, wait a few hours and run it again. It picks up where it left off.

How it works

Instagram's "Your Activity" page shows your comments with a Select button at the top. The script:

1. Clicks Select to enter selection mode
2. Checks up to 3 comment rows (clicking the row itself, not the checkbox icon — Instagram uses a CSS mask trick where the checkbox element has pointer-events: none and only the parent row is actually clickable)
3. Clicks Delete (there are two Delete elements in the DOM; only the one with pointer-events: auto actually works)
4. Waits for the confirmation dialog and clicks Delete again
5. Waits for the page to reload the comment list
6. Repeats until no comments remain

Batch size is 3 because Instagram's DOM gets unstable with larger selections. The delays exist for the same reason and to avoid rate-limiting.

Running headless

The console script needs a live browser tab. For true fire-and-forget, you can drive Chrome via the DevTools Protocol. See headless.md.

This is useful if you're building an automated hygiene routine (e.g., run weekly via cron to catch new comments).

What this does NOT do

• Delete your likes (separate activity page, same technique)
• Delete your story replies
• Clear your search history
• Remove cached copies from third-party scrapers (Intelligence X, Wayback Machine, etc.)
• Delete the post itself or other people's comments
• Make your account private or change any settings

If you've commented publicly for years, assume some of that data has already been scraped and archived. This tool cleans the source (Instagram), not the downstream copies.

Roadmap

• Comment deletion (this repo, tested on 1,700+ comments)
• Rate limit detection and auto-cooldown
• Python CDP runner with resume support
• Console paste version with rate limit handling
• Like removal (/your_activity/interactions/likes/)
• Story reply deletion (/your_activity/interactions/story_replies/)
• Search history clearing (/your_activity/search_history/)
• Docker container for headless cron runs

Things that could break it

This script manipulates Instagram's DOM directly. If they change their page structure, it stops working. It'll error out rather than do something wrong, but review the code before running it.

Key selectors:

• [aria-label="Delete"] — delete button
• [role="button"][aria-label="Image with button"] — comment rows (select mode)
• [aria-label="Toggle checkbox"] — checkboxes (clicked via parent row)
• [role="dialog"] — confirmation popup
• Text "Select" / "Cancel" — mode toggle

Credits

• Original comment deletion script by sbolel
• Fixed and reworked for current Instagram DOM (Aug 2026): text-based Select discovery, parent-element checkbox clicks, pointer-events filtering, dialog-scoped confirmation targeting

License

MIT — see LICENSE.