Skip to main content

Instagram is looking for a way to help you improve your feed

If your Instagram feed feels messy and chaotic, then a new feature currently undergoing testing may be just what you need.

Spotted in recent days by Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher whose efforts have turned up plenty of other Instagram-related tidbits in the past, the feature lets you “group the accounts you follow to make them easier to manage.”

In its current form, the feature lets you sort all of the accounts into various categories, for example, those you’ve interacted with least over the last 90 days (in terms of liking their posts or reacting to their Stories), and those that have the most posts in your feed, again over the preceding 90 days.

It will also group them together according to the kind of content they show, such as art or travel posts.

The resulting lists make it easy for you to scan all of the accounts that you’re following. If there are any posters whose content you no longer want to see, you simply tap the “Following” button beside their name to banish them from your feed.

While the feature could certainly go some way to helping you better organize your feed, we should emphasize that at this stage it’s merely in a test phase and therefore may never see the light of day. But if the testing is deemed a success, there’s a good chance it could land on Instagram in its current form, or slightly modified, in a future update.

As for changes that have made it to the app, Instagram recently made it easier for you to manage the data that you share with third-party apps and websites. If you’ve been using Instagram for a long time, it’s possible you’ve forgotten which apps and websites you’ve authorized to gather data from your account. In that case, the new feature gives you an excellent opportunity to review your Instagram settings and make any necessary adjustments to the way that you share your data with various online services.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Having trouble accessing your Instagram account? You’re not alone
Instagram being used on an iPhone.

Instagram appears to be down right now, but the glitch many users are reporting is an odd one. It's not just that users are having trouble accessing the popular photo- and video-sharing app, but they're also having trouble accessing their own accounts and have reported being hit with account suspension notices.

On Monday morning, the apparent Instagram outage was reported by users on Twitter and on Downdetector. Both sites included numerous reports saying that users suddenly lost access to their IG accounts and were given account suspension notices.

Read more
Instagram and Facebook down? You’re not alone
Turned on smartphone with Instagram app icon on its screen.

Thursday morning. The work week is almost over, the weekend is just around the corner ... and that also apparently means that you can't use Instagram or Facebook. At the time of publication on Thursday, October 27, both Instagram and Facebook appear to be down.

Looking at Down Detector, reports for the outage spiked around 9:40 a.m. with 2,000+ reports. For Facebook, 65% of users are having issues with the website, another 29% are having problems with the app, and 6% are reporting issues with their feed/timeline.

Read more
Instagram’s expanded blocking lets you block a person’s backup accounts
Two mobile screenshots Instagram's expanded blocking feature.

Instagram has announced a number of new safety feature updates to its photo and video sharing app, including an expansion of its existing blocking feature.

On Thursday, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tweeted a video in which he introduced the new safety updates to IG. Of the three new "updated safety tools" Mosseri announced, the expansion of IG's blocking feature was particularly notable.

Read more