The Analytical Summary
- Instagram is prototyping a new shortcut gestures — a pull-down on the main Feed and a swipe-up on Reels — that surface "Your Algorithm" controls instantly, without a trip through Settings—making it easier to access and control while you browse Reels and the main feed.
- The late June 2026 testing phase outlines three key user mechanics: a dedicated pull-down menu on the main feed, contextual swipe-up prompts on Reels, and real-time adjustment buttons positioned directly below video content.
- The new buttons beneath Reels will allows you to flag "more like this" or "less like this" in real time, making it a user-directed interest daily workflows. Mosseri also previewed a chat-style input where users type what they want more of — "positive content," "travel," "recipes" — and Instagram suggests matching topics to add. In fact, a conversational recommendation tool may allow people to type the kinds of posts they want to see.
- The move builds on "Your Algorithm," which rolled out from Reels (Oct/Dec 2025) to Explore and now the main Feed, signaling Meta's broader bet on user-driven personalization over purely passive tracking.
- First deployed for Reels in December 2025, the explicit interest-tuning engine was expanded to the Explore tab in April 2026 and integrated into the main Home feed on June 10, 2026, leading to the current gesture-based iteration.
Sometimes, scrolling through social media feels like we are cut up in the middle of what we don't want because in many cases the social media feed can go off track and start recommending contents that are not interesting to us. However, Instagram has already found a way to tackle that using “Your Algorithm”, a feature that lets users adjust the topics shaping their recommendations. But but reaching it usually means you will to leave whatever you're watching and navigate through the menus to carryout the settings under your account.
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| Your Algorithm Infographic |
Now, the company is prototyping the tools to be useful while people are actually scrolling in the app. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has shared early previews of new shortcuts designed to bring the algorithm controls directly into the users' feed experience, allowing them to control what the app should recommend without navigating to their accounts' settings.
What "your algorithm" already does is that it gives you a visible window into the topics Meta AI believes you are interested in, along with the ability to add new topics or remove ones that no longer fit. It allows you to type in the topics you want to see more or less of, and your Reels and Explore content reflects those choices, with changes carrying across both surfaces since it's all one system.
However, it's worth noting that Instagram did not launch these features everywhere at once. Only an initial test of Your Algorithm for Reels was launched in October 2025. It was later expanded to the Explore feed in April 2026, before extending it to the main Feed shortly after.
Today, Your Algorithm is live across Feed, Reels, and Explore as one unified system. It allows you to adjust topic preferences in any single surface and updates recommendations everywhere else automatically. Posts that were surfaced because of a chosen interest even carry a small label, like "From Running" or "From Street Style," so users can see exactly why something showed up.
Contextual Gestures and Immediate Feedback Loops
What changed isn't the underlying system, but how close the “Your Algorithm” is to the action that system now lives. According to the preview Mosseri shared, Instagram is testing a pull-down gesture on the main Feed that opens the Your Algorithm panel instantly, plus a swipe-up gesture that does the same thing directly from within a Reel. Neither requires leaving the content you're currently looking at.
Alongside those gestures, Instagram is also testing dedicated buttons underneath Reels that let you say, in the moment, whether you want more videos like the one you're currently playing or fewer of them. That's a notable shift from how recommendation systems have traditionally worked. In other words, Instagram no longer need to infare with intent from indirect signals — such as how long you watched, whether you rewatched, whether you scrolled past quickly — the app would simply just ask you outright, mid-scroll, and adjust immediately.
More • Less • Add Topics • Remove Topics
The more ambitious piece of the preview is a freeform input that works almost like a chat prompt. You don't even need to browse a static list of pre-set topic categories again, all you now need is to type out exactly what kind of content you want more—be it fitness clips, travel videos, recipe ideas, or simply "more positive content"—and Instagram would respond with related topic suggestions pulled from that request.
This effectively turns feed curation into a conversation rather than a settings adjustment. It also gives Instagram a way to capture intent that doesn't map cleanly onto existing topic tags — someone who wants "calmer" content, for instance, isn't necessarily asking for a single category, but a mood across several categories. A natural-language input can capture that nuance in a way a checklist can't.
TikTok is one of the social media platforms that has built its reputation on uncannily accurate recommendations, and Instagram's response — for years — has been to fold more of its product around Reels and AI-driven discovery. Giving users an explicit steering wheel is, in part, a transparency play aimed at addressing a recurring criticism of algorithmic feeds: that they feel opaque and unaccountable.
Even AI-powered recommendations now drive engagement gains across Meta's apps, and ceding some of that control back to users runs counter to a company that has consistently prioritized maximizing time spent. Most users will rarely bother adjusting these controls even when available.
| Recommendation Task / Feature | Current Instagram Experience (Today) | New Feature Being Tested | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open recommendation controls | Navigate to Settings → Content Preferences → Your Algorithm. | Pull down on the main Feed or swipe up from a Reel to open recommendation controls instantly. | Makes recommendation settings much faster and easier to access. |
| Tell Instagram you don't want similar content | Use "Not Interested" or manually remove topics later through settings. | Tap a "Less like this" button directly beneath a Reel while watching it. | Lets users correct recommendations immediately instead of after the fact. |
| Tell Instagram what you want more of | Mostly through likes, follows, searches, watch history, or selecting predefined topics. | Use "More like this" buttons or type requests such as "more travel" or "more positive content" and choose suggested topics. | Provides direct control instead of relying mainly on algorithmic guesses. |
| Add or manage interests | Select or edit interests from a fixed topic list inside Your Algorithm. | Enter interests naturally using conversational AI prompts with smart topic suggestions. | Makes personalization more intuitive and flexible. |
| How Instagram learns your preferences | Primarily inferred from watch time, rewatches, likes, pauses, comments and searches. | Combines behavioral signals with explicit, real-time feedback from users. | Improves recommendation accuracy by reducing guesswork. |
| Customization workflow | Requires leaving the content you're viewing and navigating through menus. | Most controls appear directly within the Feed and Reels. | Keeps users in the browsing experience while making adjustments. |
| Speed of recommendation changes | Recommendations adjust gradually as Instagram gathers more behavioral data. | Feedback could influence recommendations almost immediately. | Allows users to recover quickly from unwanted recommendations. |
| Algorithm transparency | Limited visibility into how recommendations can be customized. | "Your Algorithm" becomes a visible, everyday feature instead of a hidden settings page. | Helps users better understand and influence what they see. |
| Availability | Existing recommendation controls are available to all Instagram users. | New shortcuts and AI-powered tools are currently being tested with selected users. | Allows Instagram to refine the features before a wider rollout. |
Impact of Instagram's Your Algorithm on Creators
Recommendation algorithms increasingly determine what billions of people consume online. Instagram has always allowed users to influence recommendations indirectly through likes, follows, comments and watch time. But these new tools have further backed that effort by introducing a far more explicit method of telling the platform what users actually want. However, this has both positive and negative effects on creators.
For anyone building an audience on Instagram, it's worth noting that they should adjust their way of production because if people can explicitly tell Instagram to show less of a content category — not just less of a specific account — then broad, unfocused content has more ways to get filtered out before it even has a chance to perform. Niche clarity, consistent topics, and content that doesn't require guesswork to categorize all become more valuable.
At the same time, someone who explicitly tells Instagram "more cooking content" or "more SaaS marketing tips" is signaling real, qualified intent — arguably a stronger signal than a passive watch-time metric. Reaching that person through organic recommendation may carry more weight than a similarly sized audience reached through paid targeting, because the audience opted in on purpose.
