Instagram Sandbox Invites page redirects to the developer register page

Question

I have an app in sandbox mode and I have a sandbox user that is pending . (It has also been at least a day since the user was added). The user can successfully use my app and has given authorization; however, the user's likes returns an empty response (I know they can only access liked media from other authorized sandbox users, but the user has liked media from my account that is set as the admin). The Instagram API documentation states that the user may go to their developer site and accept/decline sandbox invites from the Sandbox Invites tab except my user is shown the developer register page instead. Does anyone know what is going on/how to fix this?

Answer 1

Instagram made sweeping changes to it's API and the way it is accessed recently. As a result of the lockdown the Sandbox Invite process is glitchy at best. I myself just ran into this issue of invites not showing up.

It seems, for the moment, the only way to access the invite is to fill out the developer form(I just used a http://localhost:8000 URL and a random phone number that is not likely to exist, although try without one as it might not be necessary). That should automatically forward you to the invite page where the invited user can then accept or decline a Sandbox Invite.

It's a bit of a mess and the lack of documentation / indication to indicate that this step is mandatory doesn't help matters. Hope this helps save some time and headaches!