Insomniac

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Liking, following and watching stories automatically on your Android phone/emulator. No root required: it works on UI Automator, which is an official Android UI testing framework.

No Android device? Follow instructions to setup Insomniac on a free emulator: Windows, macOS, Linux.

Table of contents

• Why you should automate Instagram activity (liking, following, etc.)?
• How to install
  • How to install on Raspberry Pi OS
• Get started
  • Usage example
  • Full list of command line arguments
  • FAQ
• Extra features
• Udemy course for beginners
• Source code
• Filtering
• Whitelist and Blacklist
• Targets Interaction
• Analytics
• Features in progress
• Why Insomniac?
• Community

Why you should automate Instagram activity (liking, following, etc.)?

💸 If you want just to increase your followers count or get more likes, there's a bunch of companies that will give you that immediately for a few $$$. But most likely your audience will be bots and mass-followers.

🌱 If you want to get engaged followers, that will be interested in your content and probably will pay you for your services, then automation is the right way.

🎯 This Instagram bot provides you methods to target on the audience that is most likely interested in you. These methods are:

1. Interact with followers of bloggers with similar content
2. Interact with likers of hashtags that you use
3. Filter accounts to avoid bots and mass-followers

📈 Using these methods altogether gives the best result.

How to install

1. Install insomniac package: run python3 -m pip install insomniac in Terminal / Command Prompt
   _{^{Provided python and pip are installed already. Learn how to check it.}}
2. Save launcher start.py to a directory where you're going to launch the script from (right-click on the link, then Save As / Download Linked File As)
3. Download and unzip Android platform tools, move them to a folder where you won't delete them accidentally. Standard place is C:\android-sdk\ (Windows), ~/Library/Android/sdk/ (Linux/macOS)
4. Add platform-tools path to the PATH environment variable. If you do it correctly, Terminal / Command Prompt command adb devices will print List of devices attached

IMPORTANT: if you previously used v2.x.x, then insomniac.py file will conflict with insomniac package. So, save start.py in a separate folder

How to install on Raspberry Pi OS

1. Update apt-get: sudo apt-get update
2. Install ADB and Fastboot: sudo apt-get install -y android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot
3. Install insomniac: python3 -m pip install insomniac
4. Save start.py file

Get started

1. Connect Android device to your computer with a USB cable
2. Enable Developer options on the device

On Android 4.1 and lower, the Developer options screen is available by default. On Android 4.2 and higher, you must enable this screen. To enable developer options, tap the Build Number option 7 times. You can find this option in one of the following locations, depending on your Android version:

Android 9 (API level 28) and higher: Settings > About Phone > Build Number

Android 8.0.0 (API level 26) and Android 8.1.0 (API level 26): Settings > System > About Phone > Build Number

Android 7.1 (API level 25) and lower: Settings > About Phone > Build Number

3. Switch on USB debugging (and also Install apps via USB and Allow ADB debugging in charge only mode if there are such options) on the Developer options screen.
4. Device will ask you to allow computer connection. Press "Connect"
5. Type adb devices in terminal. It will display attached devices. There should be exactly one device. Then run the script (it works on Python 3):
6. Open Terminal / Command Prompt in the folder with downloaded start.py (or type cd <path-to-start.py>) and run

python3 start.py --interact @natgeo-followers

Make sure that the screen is turned on and device is unblocked. You don't have to open Instagram app, script opens it and closes when it's finished. Just make sure that Instagram app is installed. If everything's fine, script will open @natgeo's followers and like their posts.

Usage example

Say you have a travel blog. Then you may want to use such setup:

python3 start.py --interact @natgeo-followers amazingtrips-recent-likers --interactions-count 20-30 --likes-count 1-2 --follow-percentage 80 --repeat 160-220

Or just download a config file interact.json and put it near start.py. Then run:

python3 start.py --config-file interact.json

The script will sequentially interact with 20-30 @natgeo's followers and 20-30 #amazingtrips posts likers. During each interaction it will like 1-2 random posts and also follow 80% of interacted users. When finished it will close Instagram app and wait for 160-220 minutes. Then the script will repeat the same (and will repeat infinitely), but already interacted users will be ignored. The list of sources (@natgeo and #amazingtrips) will be shuffled each time.

All this randomness makes it very hard for Instagram to detect that you're using a bot. However, be careful with number of interactions, because even a human can be banned for violating limits.

Full list of command line arguments

All arguments are listed on our wiki pages:

• Full list of command line arguments – arguments available for free
• Full list of command line arguments (including extra features) – arguments available after activation

You can view the same list in Terminal / Command Prompt by running with no arguments: python3 start.py.

FAQ

• How to stop the script?
  Ctrl+C (control+C for Mac)

• Can I prevent my phone from falling asleep while the script is working?
  Yes. Settings -> Developer Options -> Stay awake.

• What to do if I got soft ban (cannot like/follow/comment)?
  Clear Instagram application data. You'll have to login again and then it will work as usual. But it's highly recommended to lower your interactions count for the future and take a pause with the script.

• How to connect Android phone via WiFi?

• How to run on 2 or more devices at once?

• Script crashes with OSError: RPC server not started! or ReadTimeoutError

Extra features

All core features in this project are free to use. But you may want to get more fine grained control over the bot via these features:

• Filtering - skip unwanted accounts by various parameters, read more
• Removing mass followers - automate "cleaning" your account, read more
• Scrapping - technique that makes interactions significantly safer and faster, read more
• Analytics tool - build presentation that shows your growth, read more

Activate these features by supporting our small team on Patreon: https://insomniac-bot.com/activate/.

Udemy course for beginners

We've recorded a video course to show and explain everything you need to know to start using Insomniac. In these videos we explain how to:

• Install Python
• Install Insomniac
• Install platform-tools
• Enable and set developer options on a mobile phone / emulator
• Run Insomniac from Terminal / Command Prompt

All videos are recorded for 4 platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi. Via this link you can get the course with a great discount: Udemy Сourse Сoupon.

Purchase the course and get two months of extra features for free!

Source code

You can see contents of the insomniac PyPi package in the insomniac folder. So, you can work with the source code directly.

1. Clone the project: git clone https://github.com/alexal1/Insomniac.git
2. Install required libraries: python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
3. Launch the script the same way: python3 start.py --interact @natgeo

Pull requests are welcome! Any feature you implement will be included in the Insomniac PyPi package after review. Features implemented by contributors are always free and available for everyone. Only some of features implemented exclusively by Insomniac Team are declared extra features and are stored on our server. This is our way to monetize the project in order to keep the code always clean and working.

Filtering

You may want to ignore mass-followers (e.g. > 1000 followings) because they are most likely interested only in growing their audience. Or ignore too popular accounts (e.g. > 5000 followers) because they won't notice you. You can do this (and more) by using filter.json file. List of available parameters:

Please read detailed explanation and instructions how to use filter in this Patreon post.

IMPORTANT: Please use --total-get-profile-limit 500 (or some other value) when using filter. You may get a soft ban because of opening and closing too large amount of Instagram profiles.

Whitelist and Blacklist

Whitelist – affects --remove-mass-followers, --unfollow and all other unfollow actions. Users from this list will never be removed from your followers or unfollowed.

Blacklist - affects all other actions. Users from this list will be skipped immediately: no interactions and no following.

Go to Insomniac folder and create a folder named as your Instagram nickname (or open an existing one, as Insomniac creates such folder when launched). Create there a file whitelist.txt or blacklist.txt (or both of them). Write usernames in these files, one username per line, no @'s, no commas. Don't forget to save. That's it!

Targets Interaction

Go to Insomniac folder and create a folder named as your Instagram nickname (or open an existing one, as Insomniac creates such folder when launched). Create there a file targets.txt. Write usernames in these files, one username per line, no @'s, no commas. Don't forget to save.

Run Insomniac with --interact-targets parameter, and the session will be targeted on those specific profiles form the targets.txt file.

Analytics

There also is an analytics tool for this bot. It is a script that builds a report in PDF format. The report contains account's followers growth graphs for different periods. Liking, following and unfollowing actions' amounts are on the same axis to determine bot effectiveness. The report also contains stats of sessions length for different configurations that you've used. All data is taken from sessions.json file that's generated during bot's execution.

To get access to the analytics tool you have to join Patreon $10 tier.

Features in progress

• [x] Follow given percentage of interacted users by --follow-percentage 50
• [x] Unfollow given number of users (only those who were followed by the script) by --unfollow 100
• [x] Unfollow given number of non-followers (only those who were followed by the script) by --unfollow-non-followers 100
• [x] Support intervals for likes and interactions count like --likes-count 2-3
• [x] Interaction by hashtags
• [ ] Add random actions to behave more like a human (watch your own feed, stories, etc.)
• [ ] Commenting during interaction

Why Insomniac?

There already are Instagram automation tools that work either on Instagram web version or via Instagram private API. Unfortunately, both ways have become dangerous to use. Instagram bots detection system is very suspicious to browser actions now. And as for private API – you will be blocked forever if Instagram detects that you're using it.

That's why need arised in a solution for mobile devices. Instagram can't distinguish bot from a human when it comes to your phone. However, even a human can reach limits when using the app, so don't fail to be careful. Always set --total-likes-limit to 300 or less. Also it's better to use --repeat to act periodically for 2-3 hours, because Instagram keeps track of how long the app works.

Community

We are now approved training providers for Udemy. Try our course for beginners!
The most convenient place to discuss all bugs, new features, Instagram limits, etc. is the Discord server. If you're not familiar with Discord, you can also join our Telegram chat. And finally, all useful info is posted on our Patreon page.