How Instagram Decides What to Display on Your Feed
Instagram is taking a whole new approach to your feed. Instead of showing you content that you’ve already shown interest in (by following the account), it shifted the focus to discovering. With that in mind, Instagram is now flooding your feed with countless suggested posts, which can be images or Reels. You may be wondering what they are based on. As the company itself explains, there are various criteria for suggested posts showing up in your feed, including:
Your activity: Instagram looks at your activity on the app, including the accounts you follow and the posts you’ve liked, saved or commented on.Your connections: your history of connecting with certain accounts and similar accounts are also taken into consideration.Post popularity: Instagram tends to suggest popular posts from categories you follow and will also look at how others are interacting with that post.Account popularity: how many people have interacted with a certain account in the past few weeks is also part of the “suggested” equation.
How to Turn Off Suggested Posts on Instagram
Unfortunately, Instagram doesn’t have a disable button for “suggested posts” that would allow you can turn them off and on at will. However, you do have control over what can appear on your feed. We discuss the alternatives below.
Quickly Get Rid of a Suggested Post
The easiest way to get rid of a suggested post is quickly delete it from view. By doing this, you’ll be removing the post from your feed, but content from the same account may show up later on anyway, although Instagram says it will take into account your preference.
Snooze Suggested Posts (for up to 30 days)
If, on the other hand, you want to make sure you’re not going to see more suggested posts from an account or anything similar. You can tell Instagram that you’re not interested in this type of content. There’s also a hidden option to snooze all suggested posts in your feed for 30 days, which may be of greater interest to you.
Choose a Different Feed View
Another alternative to stop seeing suggested posts is to switch from the default feed view to a custom one. This feature may fly under the radar for many users, as it isn’t really highlighted. Make it happen by following the below step. Note: you’ll need to switch to a custom feed view every time you open the app, as the option won’t stay selected.
How to Add Accounts to “Favorites” on Instagram
The following shows how to add an account to your Favorites list.
Block Accounts With Undesirable Content
If you want to make sure certain content doesn’t show up on your feed, you can block the accounts altogether.
Browse Instagram on the Web
Another trick to no longer see suggested posts on your Instagram feed is to switch to the Web version of Instagram. Oddly, Instagram has yet to implement this feature on the Web, so you won’t stumble upon annoying suggested posts there – only pictures from your friends and other accounts you follow. Image credit: Freepik. All screenshots by Alexandra Arici.
