instagram-dm-unsender (idmu)

As of 2023 instagram.com doesn't allow batch unsending of messages which is why this project came to be.

The userscript allows a user to batch unsend DMs in a thread on the web version of instagram.com

⚠️ Only English is supported as of yet so please set your UI language to English before running the script.

⚠️ This might not work

Use cases

• One potential use case would be when individuals seek to transition to Fediverse and would want to "remove" their messages from Meta's database.

What's the difference between deleting and unsending?

Deleting a thread will only delete messages on your end but the other party will still be able to read your messages.

On the other hand, unsending of a thread will result in the deletion of messages on both ends, rendering the other party unable to read your messages.

How does it work / How can I use it?

This script is meant to be run on the page that lists the message threads.

The UI will only appear once you select a message thread :

From here on out, three buttons will be made available :

• Unsend all DMs - Start the unsending workflow
• Batch size - Change the number of page to load between unsending
• Load all DMs - Load all your thread messages

The workflow works as follow:

• Create a list of all messages by querying the DOM with an early messages detection strategy (we test the raw outputs of our find-messages-strategy against parts of the workflow).

  • For each message do the following:

    • Show action menu button:

      Dispatch a mouseover for this message so that the three dots button appears.

    • Open action menu:

      Click the three dots button to open the message actions.

    • Open unsend confirm modal:

      Click the "Unsend" action button, a modal will open with a dialog that asks the user to confirm the intent.

    • Click "confirm":

      Click the "confirm" button inside the modal.

There is no concurrency. Messages are unsent one after the other by using a queue.

⚠️ Instagram has rate limits. After a certain number of messages, you might get blocked from unsending another message for a period of time.

Installing

Install a Userscript manager for your browser :

• Firefox
• Chrome

Finally, install the userscript from OpenUserJS :

Install latest stable release

Install development (master) version

Older releases

Development

I recommend using Violentmonkey or something similar and enabling userscript autoreloading as explained here : https://violentmonkey.github.io/posts/how-to-edit-scripts-with-your-favorite-editor/

Install dependencies:

• npm install

To both serve and build with autoreloading:

• npm start

This will also start an HTTP server and allow autoreloading of the userscript as changes are made.

You can also do a one-time build with:

• npm run build

The script will build to dist/idmu.user.js by default.

This might not work

Instagram web app is serving different UIs, probably based on the user location. Yours might not be supported

Link to the issue : https://github.com/thoughtsunificator/instagram-dm-unsender/issues/1

Testing

Use the DEBUG=idmu:test env to enable debug logs while testing.

Lint files:

• npm run eslint

Run test with ava:

• npm test

Coverage:

• npm run c8

TODO

• [ ] i18n, make sure it works for all languages
• [ ] l10n, make sure it works not only for the US version but also for the others.
• [ ] alert system (for scenarios such as rate limits)