How Do I Check Who Is Not Following Me Back on Bluesky?
Published: 1/31/2025
Wondering how to check who isn’t following you back on Bluesky? Perhaps wondering if a mutual or a friend has stabbed you in the back by unfollowing you? We understand the struggle of searching through your following list, ensuring you see the comforting “follows you” tag by each username. But surely there’s an easier way to do it, right? Besides, if you were happy to just manually double-check every user in your following list, you wouldn’t be reading this blog. In this article, we explore the manual and automated methods to check who’s not following you back on Bluesky.
How to Automatically Spot Who’s Not Following You Back on Bluesky
Even with all the hacks available, it’s still a slow and tedious process to see who isn’t following you back manually. Fortunately, there is a method that lets you see who isn’t following back automatically. It requires a feature we made called Smart Unfollows.
Smart Unfollows is a new feature on BluePilot that gives you immediate unfollow recommendations. Here’s a list of what it does:
- Makes unfollow recommendations with a reason for each one (ex. spam, inactive, NSFW, etc)
- Automatically filters accounts who don’t follow you back.
- Automatically filters accounts that Bluesky has labelled as spam or NSFW.
- Unfollows accounts in bulk on your behalf with the click of a button.
- Allows you to add accounts that you don’t want to unfollow to a whitelist, ensuring they will not appear in future unfollow checks. Perhaps there are a few really amazing accounts you want to continue following even though they don’t follow back - no worries, the whitelist is for just that.
- These settings are customizable and can be changed at any time to suit your preference. The best part? If there’s a setting you need that isn’t there, we welcome feedback. We read every piece of feedback we receive from our current user base and use it to improve our platform and deliver a streamlined Bluesky experience.
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Seeing Who Doesn’t Follow Back on Bluesky Manually
To see who isn’t following you back manually:
- Click on your following tab and look for a tag labeled “follows you” under each username.
- Anyone missing the “follows you” tag does not follow you back.
Despite this method’s tedious nature, the “follows you” tag is a straightforward and simple differentiator.
The process of seeing who doesn’t follow back is a little bit simpler when using Bluesky on desktop:
- Press CTRL + F to search for the “follows you” tag.
- Use a list comparison site to compare the users who have the “follows you” tag (your followers) with a list of your entire following. This will expose any outliers.
The desktop method is quicker and takes less effort than searching through your following list on your own, especially if you follow a lot of accounts. But it still isn’t the most efficient method to monitor this.
The other challenge with the manual route is that you have to go through the manual process constantly. It isn’t a one time fix unfortunately.
Why We Developed Smart Unfollows
Being able to identify non-followers should not be as difficult as it is. Despite this, basically no mainstream social media platforms have developed features that streamline this process, Bluesky included. Smart Unfollows and BluePilot as a whole address the gaps in Bluesky as a social media platform, providing innovative and user-friendly solutions. With features such as smart follow recommendations, negative keyword filtering, and follower tracking, having a tailored experience on Bluesky becomes easier than ever.
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