Instagram Monitoring: Track Mentions, Comments & Competitors

You post something, go for lunch and come back to 40 new comments. Somewhere in there a customer is asking where their order is. Good luck finding it.

Instagram monitoring in Nextbrowser finds it for you. It checks your account while you do other things. New comments, mentions and tags land in one list. The ones that need an answer go to the top.

TL;DR: In Nextbrowser, open Skills, find Instagram and press Open. Choose a profile signed in to Instagram and press Start. On the schedule you pick, it checks comments on your 6 latest posts, posts where you are mentioned or tagged, and new posts from up to 10 competitors. Each item gets a High, Medium or Low label. It never posts anything by itself.

What you can monitor on Instagram

Instagram monitoring means checking your account on a schedule you choose for new comments, mentions, tags and competitor posts, so you can answer the important ones first.

No API keys and no business account needed. Nextbrowser opens instagram.com the same way you do: in a browser where you are logged in. Nextbrowser is a desktop app that runs browser tasks for you, and Instagram monitoring is one of them. The Instagram skill is open source: nextbrowser-instagram-monitoring.

Here is what it checks every time:

It doesn't read your DMs and it can't search hashtags. More on that in Limits to know before you start.

Set up Instagram monitoring in four steps

You need the Nextbrowser app on your computer and an Instagram account you run. It takes about five minutes.

1. Open Skills, find the Instagram card, press Open and choose a profile.
2. Press Open instagram.com and log in.
3. Add competitors and keywords under What to watch.
4. Choose how often to check under Schedule and press Start.

Here is each step in a bit more detail.

1. Choose a profile

A profile is a separate browser with its own logins. Think of a Chrome window that remembers only its own accounts.

If you run Instagram for a few brands or clients, give each one its own profile. Then nothing gets mixed up. Our guide on managing multiple Instagram accounts shows how to set this up.

2. Log in to Instagram

Press Open instagram.com and log in like you normally do. The app never types your password for you. When you're back in the panel, you'll see your username and Signed in.

Tip: Instagram gets suspicious when an account suddenly shows up from a new place. If you can, add a proxy to this profile. A proxy gives the profile its own steady internet address.

3. Add competitors and keywords

Under What to watch there are three lists:

• Profiles to watch. Competitors or partners, for example rival_store. Up to 10.
• Keywords. Your brand name, product names and common typos, for example acme. Up to 20. Hashtags count too: #acme in a comment counts as acme.
• Skip. Words you don't care about, for example giveaway.

Below the lists are four switches: Mentions and replies, Comments on your posts, Posts you are tagged in and Keyword comments on watched profiles. Leave them all on for now.

Keywords matter. They are how you find people talking about you in a competitor's comments.

4. Choose how often to check and press Start

Under Schedule, choose how often Nextbrowser should check. You can pick anything from 5 minutes to 7 days. For most accounts every 15 or 30 minutes is a good start. Press Start.

Keep the app open and your computer awake. It only checks while the app is running.

Heads up: after the first check nothing is marked New yet. The app is just learning what is already there. You'll still see comments from the last two days. From the second check on, new things get a New label.

How Nextbrowser decides what needs an answer

Everything ends up in one list called Needs a look. Each item shows who wrote it, what they said, a link to open it on Instagram and a short note on why it's there.

Every item gets a label. You don't need to set anything up:

Labels come from simple rules in the open-source code, no AI involved.

At the top of the panel you'll see New matches · 24h and Urgent · 24h. One look tells you if something needs you right now. Done with an item? Press the check mark and it leaves the list.

From a comment to an approved reply

The monitor only reads. It never likes, comments, follows or sends messages.

To answer, press Draft reply next to an item. AI reads the conversation and writes a reply. You read it first. Nothing gets posted until you say yes to that exact text.

This button needs an AI agent connected to the app. Here is how to connect one. Without one, you still get the list and reply on Instagram yourself.

Example: a delivery complaint under your post

9:05. A customer writes under your latest post: "@acme_shop my order never arrived, can you help?"

9:15. The next check finds it. It's at the top, marked High, with the note Mentions you · Says "never arrived" · Asks a question. You press Draft reply, change one word and approve it.

The customer hears back in ten minutes instead of tomorrow. Everyone else reading that post sees it too.

It works for competitors as well. If someone writes "anyone tried acme?" under a rival's post and acme is your keyword, you'll see that comment in your list, marked Low. It isn't addressed to you, but it's a good moment to join the conversation. For the bigger picture on other platforms, read AI social media monitoring.

Limits to know before you start

What this version doesn't do yet:

• No DMs. It reads comments, mentions and tags. Direct messages stay in Instagram.
• No hashtag search. It can't search all of Instagram for your brand. Add the accounts where people talk about you.
• Numbers, not names. You see how many followers you have, not who followed or left.
• Early version. Instagram changes its site without warning. If something breaks, the panel tells you what happened instead of showing an empty list.

If something looks wrong

Press Show log in the panel to see what happened on the last check.

FAQ

Try Nextbrowser

Nextbrowser is the open-source meta-orchestrator that turns your existing browsers, proxies and AI agents into one self-healing automation system.

• Download and install: GitHub Releases (Mac, Windows, Linux)
• Star the repo: nextbrowser-oss/nextbrowser-app
• Join the community: Discord

Start with your main account and two or three competitors. Let it check once, then open Needs a look and answer the first High item. Already using X? Read how X monitoring works. The Instagram part is open source, so you can see exactly how it works.