Instagram is testing the ability for users to reset their recommendations, the company announced on Tuesday. By resetting your recommendations, you would be starting fresh and retraining the app’s algorithm about the content you enjoy across your Explore page, home feed, and Reels tab.
The feature is geared toward users who feel like their content recommendations no longer cater to their interests. For instance, you may have liked recipe videos in the past, but are no longer interested in them, yet that sort of content may be all you see on your Reels and Explore pages.
The new addition is similar to a feature that TikTok rolled out last year that allowed users to reset their For You feeds.
Once you reset your Instagram recommendations, your content recommendations will start to personalize again over time based on the posts and accounts you interact with. If you choose to reset your recommendations, you will have the option to review your following list to unfollow accounts that share content you’re no longer interested in.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted a video on Instagram noting that the new feature isn’t meant to be used frequently, as it’s only designed for instances when you want a total refresh.
“I want to be clear, this is a big thing to do,” Mosseri said. “It’s going to make your Instagram much less interesting at first, because we’re going to treat you as if we know nothing about your interests and it will take some time to learn those again. So it’s not something I recommend doing all the time — but if you do end up in a place where you really don’t feel good about your experience, this gives you an out.”
The new feature joins Instagram’s current tools that let users curate their recommendations. Users can select “Interested” or ‘Not Interested” on a post to signal how they feel about the content and whether they want more or less of it. They can also hide content with certain words or phrases in it using the social network’s “Hidden Words” feature.
Instagram says that while these tools are designed to help you curate your recommendations on a day-to-day basis, the new option to reset your recommendations is meant to be used when you want to completely start over.
The new feature is rolling out globally “soon,” Instagram says.
