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Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Feb. 26

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Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.


Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

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Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

completed-nyt-mini-crossword-puzzle-for-feb-26-2026.png

The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for Feb. 26, 2026.

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NYT/Screenshot by CNET

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Tesla or Toyota
Answer: CAR

4A clue: What the “M” of BMX stands for
Answer: MOTO

5A clue: Leafy lunch
Answer: SALAD

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6A clue: Weighing device
Answer: SCALE

7A clue: “To be,” in Latin
Answer: ESSE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Pepsi and Coke
Answer: COLAS

2D clue: Dickens’s “___ of Two Cities”
Answer: ATALE

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3D clue: Took to another floor, as the [circled letters]
Answer: RODE

4D clue: Apple computers
Answer: MACS

5D clue: Dir. from San Francisco to Santa Monica
Answer: SSE

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Shock Your Way to Victory with the Chessboard That Zaps Mistakes

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Taser Chess Shocking Chessboard
Fletcher Heisler was beaten by chess hustlers in the park, so he wanted revenge, but regular practice wasn’t cutting it. So he reasoned, “Maybe I need some negative reinforcement,” thus taser chess was born, or a chessboard that would literally penalize you for making blunders by delivering an electric shock.



Each square on this regular 8×8 grid has a secret. A mechanical keyboard switch sits underneath, activated by a magnet in the conductive chess pieces. When you lift a piece, the Raspberry Pi running Python chess library software detects it. When you put it back in the wrong spot, one of the relay switches turns on, and a TENS unit with the maximum setting shoots a shock straight through the metal square into your arm, which is strapped to the board. The discomfort brings the point home quickly.

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The chess pieces began as low-cost Amazon buys, and he used acetone to remove the lacquer as well as make them conductive. The felt bottoms melted away. He covered half of the squares with copper tape to show the colors without interrupting the circuit. There are four relay boards in there, each with 16 squares, to keep the electricity separated. To be honest, he didn’t bother with en passant; who does that anyway? The Pi just assumes a normal starting position and maintains track of when you lift or drop the pieces, thus it is simple, dependable, and quite effective at surprising you.

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Taser Chess Shocking Chessboard
The system’s settings provide a wide range of punishment. The “illegal move” setting shocks you simply for picking the wrong piece up on your turn. The “capture” mode illuminates a little display to indicate you where you can go and, if you touch the wrong location, the board bites.The “Engine” option allows you to compete against stockfish and becomes extremely harsh if you make any mistakes. The “Timed” setting forces you to move quickly because you only have 5 seconds, and the pain increases if you stay too long. If you try to solve a puzzle and get it wrong, the board will punish you severely. When you fail, a current travels straight through your muscles, causing your arm to jerk, similar to a terrible handshake.

Taser Chess Shocking Chessboard
It took him a year to assemble the thing, starting with prototypes crammed in diaper boxes and breadboards, and spending the most of his time traveling with the wiring in disarray in Airbnb homes, with people becoming suspicious in the Cat Café lab, which he used as a makeshift workshop. The airline broke the checked luggage on its way to the Open Sauce Maker Fair, and one of the hotel rebuilds nearly set the room on fire by getting the wiring backwards and melting the power rails. In the end, duct tape held the final version together during demos.

Taser Chess Shocking Chessboard
The shocks begin mildly, with a tingling sensation at level 2, but by level 8, you are experiencing full-body flinches. The pads did not last long, and the voltage continued to diminish. Heisler ended up spending far more time rewiring than attempting to understand the openings. As a result, chess expertise stalled; the whole thing was too delicate to continue working with.The board was constantly breaking down and needing to be repaired, until he acquired some conductive epoxy and sealed up all the loose connections. He also found a purpose for a bunch of old Ethernet cables, which provided him enough extra wire to fix some of the other wiring, including several battery adapters to make it more portable.

Taser Chess Shocking Chessboard
Taser chess completely reverses the learning process, since it turns out that the pain it causes is far more effective at getting ideas stuck in your head than repetition alone. As it turns, behavioral research actually supports this strategy, dating back to those old Skinner boxes and the penalties in video games; basically, both humans and animals are extremely attentive to consequences. This board, however, takes things to a whole new level. One solid game against some of those hustlers, and the surprises might just start working in your favor. Until then, every jolt feels like progress, even if it’s the hard way.
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Paramount Plus Coupon Codes and Deals: 50% Off

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Once the most talked-about TV show in the country, South Park, is on Paramount+. Don’t you want to know what got Trump in such a tizzy?

Stream the much buzzed-about South Park, fan-favorite Yellowstone, original series MobLand, and rebooted crime drama Dexter & Dexter on Paramount+. The streaming network has a bingeable TV series for almost everyone. And whether you want to remember Lindsay Lohan’s old face in the classic Mean Girls flick, or wonder just how many more sequels Tom Cruise has left in him with Top Gun: Maverick, there’s a bevy of films to stream, too.

If you’re like me and have at least half a dozen streaming services, our Paramount+ coupon codes can help you save so you can watch the content you want without having to get rid of one of your other beloved content platforms. (I love pretending the world isn’t full of suffering around me and instead focus on Sylvester Stallone’s ever-changing Play-Doh face in Tulsa King.)

Try Paramount+ Free With a One-Week Trial

If you’re unsure if you’ll actually want to commit to Paramount+, or if there’s a sports event like March Madness games and you only need to access the content for a little while, Paramount+’s free trial is a great option. The trial lasts one week, is for new subscribers only, and can’t be paired with other offers.

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There are tiered plans, including Essential, which allows for 3 devices, select Showtime series, NFL games, and can be streamed on up to 3 devices at once, but has ads; and Premium, which includes all that except there are no ads, downloadable content, CBS live, and all of Showtime content.

Find the Right Paramount+ Plan Pricing and Get the Latest Deals

It’s important that you choose the right Paramount+ streaming plan for you so that you can get the best bang for your buck. Lucky for you, all plans come with a 7-day free trial so you can make sure you’re choosing the right plan for you. The first is Paramount+ Essential, which is $8 per month. It has ads included, but you’ll have access to over 40,000 episodes and movies. And you’ll be able to stream on 3 devices at once, be able to watch NFL games on CBS and UEFA Champions League, and select Showtime series are also available. Paramount+ Premium is the next tier (and the most popular choice), which starts at $13 per month (after the free trial ends), and you’ll get everything mentioned in the previous tier, without ads. You’ll have all that as well as the ability to watch in 4K UHD, Dolby Vision or HDR10, downloadable movies and shows, streaming CBS live and all of Showtime’s content library.

Can You Cancel Paramount Plus at any Time?

If you find the service isn’t right for you, or just need to cut down on subscriptions, you can cancel Paramount+ any time. However, the cancellation process depends on where you signed up. If you signed up directly on the website, you’ll need to go to your account page.

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Save on a Paramount+ Subscription With Student and Military Discounts

If you’re a student now (or have your student ID lying around somewhere), you can get a Paramount+ plan at only $4 a month. All you have to do is verify your student status and you’ll get 50% off any plan of your choosing for the first year. Or if you’re a military member, Paramount+ gives 50% off any subscription for life.

Watch Paramount+ Originals and Fan Favorites

There’s truly something for everyone in the family, with movies, kids’ shows, and Paramount+ originals included in every plan. If you’re feeling spooky, I’d recommend Dexter: Resurrection, or Yellowjackets, but if you’re looking for something more family-friendly, there’s super popular cartoons like Rango or Sonic the Hedgehog to choose from.

Looking for specific recommendations? I’ve got you. There are tons of great new releases coming to Paramount+ this month, including Landman season 2, new Paramount+ original comedy series Crutch starring Tracy Morgan, and new episodes of (my favorite) newly premiered Ink Master Season 17. There are also tons of new movies, including The Cut, a boxing drama starring Orlando Bloom, dark comedy Shell, and true-crime tale My Nightmare Stalker: The Eva LaRue Story. Plus, Paramount+ will be playing the important NFL holiday games.

Check out the wide breadth of TV and movie content to choose from on Paramount+ (and use the Paramount+ promo codes above to save on whatever plan you decide).

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Stream Live Sports and Events on Paramount+

For better or worse, I’m a Chiefs fan (cue the booing). I usually get a Paramount+ plan during the football season to keep up with my favorite beefy, TBI-ridden men. You can stream all of the NFL coverage you want all season long, plus, 24/7 live channels are now streaming on Paramount+, so you’ll never need to give your brain the time to process the horrors.

Stream UFC Fights Live on Paramount+

Paramount+ has all the man-on-man action you want, from bloody brawls to KO’s. Paramount+ is your one-stop shop to stream UFC live so you can catch every fight. This includes UFC 326: Holloway vs. Oliveira 2, airing March 7 and UFC Fight Night: Emmett vs. Vallejos, airing March 14.

Watch March Madness With Paramount+

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The annual tournament that determines which men’s and women’s Division I teams will win the NCAA Basketball championships, March Madness, will be streaming on Paramount+ this spring. You can watch any men’s March Madness games that are being broadcast on CBS with Paramount+. Let the games begin!

Don’t Miss the Champions League Soccer on Paramount+

If football (or soccer) is more your jam, Paramount+ also has you covered. You can watch Champions League Soccer at Paramount+, including fan favorites and heated rivalries from Real Madrid, AC Milan, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Barcelona, and more.

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AMD is selling $60 billion worth of GPUs – and a piece of itself – to Meta

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AMD and Meta have signed what they describe as a “strategic” partnership aimed at expanding large-scale computing capacity and continuing to bankroll Mark Zuckerberg’s long-running AGI ambitions. Central to the deal is a massive 6 gigawatts of total GPU capacity, which AMD will deploy in custom-built data center racks for…
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Rubin Observatory sends out thousands of data alerts with an assist from Seattle astronomers

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Each night, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory issues thousands of alerts about changes in the night sky. (NOIRLab / NSF / DOE-SC Illustration)

An astronomical alert system developed at the University of Washington started off with a bang this week, sending out 800,000 notifications about moving asteroids, exploding stars and other celestial changes detected by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

Tuesday night’s surge was just the first wave of alerts. Eventually, the Alert Production Pipeline is expected to produce up to 7 million alerts per night. Astronomers around the globe will use the system to sift through the torrent of data, zeroing in on events ranging from newly detected asteroids to supernovas, variable stars and active galactic nuclei.

“Rubin’s alert system was designed to allow anyone to identify interesting astronomical events with enough notice to rapidly obtain time-critical follow-up observations,” Eric Bellm, a UW astronomer who leads the Alert Production Pipeline Group for the Rubin Observatory, said today in a news release. “Rubin will survey the sky at an unprecedented scale and allow us to find the most rare and unusual objects in the universe. We can’t wait to see the exciting science that comes from these data.”

The $800 million observatory, jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, had its grand opening last June. It is now ramping up to begin its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Each night, the facility’s Simonyi Survey Telescope — named after the family of Seattle-area software billionaire Charles Simonyi, who provided $20 million in seed funding — will scan a swath of the Southern Hemisphere sky, generating up to 20 terabytes of data nightly.

Processing trillions of bytes of raw data is no easy task. For the past decade, the University of Washington’s Institute for Data Intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology, also known as the DIRAC Institute, has been working with other teams across the country to figure out how to manage the observatory’s astronomical riches.

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“Enabling real-time discovery on such a massive data stream has required years of technical innovation in image processing algorithms, databases and data orchestration,” Bellm said. “We’re thrilled to continue the UW’s legacy of excellence in data-driven science.”

Rubin’s data processing system is designed to compare pixels in new imagery with previous pictures of the same patch of sky. Each change in the image — for example, a shift in the location of a moving asteroid, or a change in the brightness of a supernova — triggers an alert within two minutes of image capture.

“The scale and speed of the alerts are unprecedented,” said Hsin-Fang Chiang, who is leading operations for data processing at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s U.S. Data Facility. “After generating hundreds of thousands of test alerts in the last few months, we are now able to say, within minutes, with each image, ‘here is everything’ and ‘go.’ ”

Software agents known as brokers use machine learning algorithms to filter the alerts for research teams and observatories. The official brokers for Rubin data include ALeRCE, AMPEL, ANTARES, Babamul, Fink, Lasair, Pitt-Google, SNAPS, and POI Broker. Using these tools, astronomers can set hyper-specific criteria — for example, to show alerts for events that are brighter than 21st magnitude, that have been detected less than six days ago, and that are also associated with two previous detections.

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Thanks to the alert system, other observatories will be able to follow up on Rubin’s data and confirm astronomical discoveries. And through collaborations with citizen-science initiatives like Zooniverse, anyone with access to a computer will be able to join in as well.

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Control Your Smart Home With Trek-Inspired Comm Badge

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One thing some people hate about voice control is that you need to have a process always running, listening for the wake word. If your system isn’t totally locally-hosted, that can raise some privacy eyebrows. Perhaps that’s part of what inspired [SpannerSpencer] to create this 24th century solution: a Comm Badge straight out of Star Trek: The Next Generation he uses to control his smart home.

This hack is as slick as it is simple. The shiny comm badge is actually metal, purchased from an online vendor that surely pays all appropriate license fees to Paramount. It was designed for magnetic mounting, and you know what else has a magnet to stick it to things? The M5StickC PLUS2, a handy ESP32 dev kit. Since the M5Stick is worn under the shirt, its magnet attached to the comm badge, some features (like the touchscreen) are unused, but that’s okay. You use what you have, and we can’t argue with how easy the hardware side of this hack comes together.

[Spanner] reports that taps to the comm badge are easily detected by the onboard accelerometer, and that the M5Stick’s microphone has no trouble picking up his voice. If the voice recordings are slightly muffled by his shirt, the Groq transcription API being used doesn’t seem to notice. From Groq, those transcriptions are sent to [Spanner]’s Home Assistant as natural language commands. Code for the com-badge portion is available via GitHub; presumably if you’re the kind of person who wants this, you either have HA set up or can figure out how.

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It seems worth pointing out that the computer in Star Trek: TNG did have a wake word: “computer”. On the other hand it seemed the badges were used to interface with it just as much as the wake word on screen, so this use case is still show accurate. You can watch it in the demo video below, but alas, at no point does his Home Assistant talk back. We can only hope he’s trained a text-to-speech model to sound like Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. At least it gives the proper “beep” when receiving a command.

This would pair very nicely with the LCARS dashboard we featured in January.

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Building An Interactive Climbing Wall

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Climbing is a cool sport. With that said, like everything, it’s even better if you integrate lots of glowing colorful LEDs. To that end, [Superbender] worked up this fun climbing wall that features interactive lighting built right in.

Structurally, there’s nothing too wild going on here. It’s a wood-framed climbing structure that stands 10 meters long and 2.5 meters high, and can be covered in lots of climbing holds. It’s the electronic side of things where it gets fun. An Arduino Due is installed to run the show, hooked up with a small TFT display and some buttons for control. It’s then hooked up to control a whole bunch of LEDs and some buttons which are scattered all across the wall. It’s also paired with an Arduino Nano which runs sound feedback, and a 433 MHz remote for controlling the system at a distance.

[Superbender] uses the lighting for fun interactive games. One example is called Hot Lava, where after each climbing pass, more holds are forbidden until you can’t make the run anymore. Chase the Blues is another fun game, where you have to climb towards a given hold, at which point it moves and you have to scamper to the next one.

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We’ve featured similar projects before from other inventive climbers. Video after the break.

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Everything Samsung announced at the Galaxy S26 launch event

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Samsung took over San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts on February 25 for Galaxy Unpacked 2026 — and left little to the imagination. Three new phones, a new pair of earbuds, and a pile of AI features. Here’s the full breakdown.

The Galaxy S26 series arrives with familiar naming

The S26, S26+, and S26 Ultra all share a rounder, more cohesive design this year — which sounds minor until you remember the Ultra used to look like it came from a completely different product line.

Pick one up, and you notice the difference straight away — it sits better in the hand, feels less aggressive in the pocket. Under the hood, all three run on a slightly overclocked version of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (denoted by the “For Galaxy” branding).

Samsung also quietly killed off the 128GB base model this year; every S26 model now starts at 256GB, and nobody is disappointed about that. What people are disappointed about is the price — both the S26 and S26+ crept up by $100 this cycle.

S26 Ultra: The Privacy Screen nobody knew they needed

The Ultra’s headline feature is a Privacy Display that darkens the screen from side angles and blurs sensitive notifications when someone nearby is clearly being nosy. In my opinion, it is one of the most useful innovations from Samsung in a while, and future Android flagships (even MacBooks) are likely to copy it.

The camera system gets a bump too, with wider apertures on the 200MP main and 5x telephoto sensors, but the selfie camera remains the same old tiny 12MP shooter.

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Third-generation Galaxy AI features are cool, too

Now Brief gives you a personalized morning snapshot — weather, calendar, reminders — before you’ve unlocked your phone. Now Nudge surfaces relevant actions based on whatever’s on your screen.

Google jumped in too: Gemini-powered Scam Detection silently handles spam calls so you never have to, and Circle to Search can now identify multiple objects at once, like scanning a full outfit instead of a single item.

Galaxy Buds 4 and Buds 4 Pro

Samsung released two models — the standard Buds 4 and the Buds 4 Pro. The Pro is the one doing the heavy lifting, with adaptive ANC, improved spatial audio, and that upgraded call clarity. The base Buds 4 keep things simpler and more affordable, but still get the core Galaxy AI treatment.

All S26 models and the Buds 4 are available for pre-order now.

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Bridgerton season 4 part 2 ending explained: do Benedict and Sophie get married, post-credits surprise, shock death and predictions for season 5 of the hit Netflix show

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WARNING: spoilers for Bridgerton season 4 part 2 ahead.

I was pretty annoyed that Netflix decided to split another of its hit shows into two parts, but I think the payoff in Bridgerton season 4 part 2 is worth it.

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Taser Chess Teaches Valuable Lessons The Hard Way

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Over the last few centuries, behavioral psychologists have documented all kinds of ways of modifying our actions and the actions of various animals. From the famous Skinner boxes to many modern video game mechanics, animals and humans alike can learn through the addition or subtraction of various rewards and punishments. And it doesn’t only impact simple actions either; [Everything is Hacked] took this idea to the extreme, using painful electric shocks to teach himself to avoid making blunders while playing chess.

This positive punishment system uses a medical device called transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) to deliver an electric shock to the skin. The electrical jolt is routed through a custom-built, conductive chess board where each square is isolated from the others and controlled by its own relay. The pieces are conductive as well, so if one is placed on a square where it shouldn’t go a relay will switch on to quickly provide the behavioral modification. The control logic is provided by a Raspberry Pi running the Stockfish chess engine, and it keeps track of the locations of the positions of all the pieces by using MX switches in the base of each square on the board.

This project took [Everything is Hacked] over a year to get into a working condition, including having to rebuild the entire project twice after mishaps with baggage handling at an airline. But he was able to demo the board to the Open Sauce tech festival and even took it to his local park to play chess with the local hustlers. Unfortunately, he reports that he spent more time reworking and rewiring his board over that year than he did improving his chess game, so unfortunately he still hasn’t been able to win any of his money back yet. Perhaps combining this project with a chess-playing robot would help.

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Can You See Who Views Your Instagram Profile?

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Instagram is widely used for sharing photos, videos, and Reels. Many people check others’ profiles out of curiosity. If you have ever opened someone’s profile multiple times, you might wonder if they can see it. The clear answer is no; Instagram does not show who viewed a profile or how many times it was viewed.

Instagram does not share this information with users. Whether you open someone’s profile one time or visit it many times, they will not be notified. There is no Instagram feature that shows profile visitors or the number of visits. Profile views are kept completely private.

Does Instagram Show Profile Visitors?

Instagram does not show who viewed your profile. There is no option or feature that provides a list of profile visitors. Unlike LinkedIn, which lets users see who has viewed their profile, Instagram keeps profile visits private.

Although profile views are private on Instagram, some actions are visible to others. If you like someone’s post, they can see your username. If you leave a comment, it appears publicly under their post. When you watch someone’s Story, your name appears on their viewers’ list. However, just opening and viewing their profile does not notify them.

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What About Professional Accounts?

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If someone uses a professional account on Instagram, they have access to Insights. Insights provide useful data like reach, engagement, and total profile visits. However, this data only displays numbers. It does not show the names of people who have visited the profile. Even with a Creator or Business account, the profile’s visitors are not disclosed.

Furthermore, the third-party apps often advertise features that claim to show who viewed your Instagram profile. However, Instagram keeps profile visits private and does not share this information with outside apps. Because of this, such apps cannot be trusted. They might steal your data or affect the security of your account. It is always safer to rely solely on Instagram’s official features.

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