Instagram gives users new power over their feeds

Instagram is taking another step toward greater transparency and user control with a new feature designed to help people understand—and influence—the content they see. The company announced that it is launching a tool called Your Algorithm, a hub that lets users view the topics shaping their Reels recommendations and adjust them to better reflect their tastes.

This new addition marks one of Instagram’s most significant moves yet toward demystifying how its recommendation systems work. Instead of leaving users guessing why certain clips keep appearing in their feeds, the platform now highlights the interests its AI believes define each person’s preferences.

Accessing the feature is simple. While watching Reels, users will notice an icon in the upper-right corner resembling two lines with small hearts. Tapping it opens the Your Algorithm dashboard, where Instagram displays a summary of what it thinks you’ve been engaging with the most. According to the company, these insights are derived from your viewing habits, the accounts you interact with, and other signals interpreted by Instagram’s AI models.

The summary appears as a short, readable description—something like: “Lately you’ve been into creativity, sports hype, fitness motivation, and skateboarding.” Instagram has designed these captions to resemble the style of year-end digital recaps, making them fun to read and easy to share. In fact, users can post their summaries directly to their Stories, allowing followers to get a glimpse of the interests shaping their personal Reels experience.

Beneath the summary lies the most important part of the new tool: a customizable list of topics Instagram believes matter to you. Unlike traditional algorithm settings that stay hidden or deeply technical, this list presents interests in plain language. Users can tap on any topic to indicate whether they want to see more or less of it, causing their future recommendations to shift accordingly.

The feature also supports adding entirely new topics. If you’re passionate about something that doesn’t appear on your personalized list, you can type it in manually. Instagram will incorporate it into your preferences and adapt your feed over time. This flexibility sets Instagram’s approach apart from many competitors, which often limit personalization to a predefined set of categories.

The rollout closely follows similar efforts by TikTok, which introduced its Manage Topics feature last year to give viewers more explicit control over their For You feed. TikTok’s version allows users to tune categories up or down, but the range is relatively limited—usually around a dozen broad options. Instagram’s tool, by contrast, generates a far more individualized list based on each user’s activity and offers the option to expand it further.

Instagram says this added level of personalization is deliberate. The platform wants its algorithm tools not only to offer transparency but also to serve as a direct link between user preferences and the content they receive. By letting people express interest in highly specific topics—whether that’s indie comics, pottery glazing, vegan cooking, or vintage tech—the company hopes to give users a sense of ownership over their feed’s evolution.

At the moment, the Your Algorithm tool is available exclusively in the United States, though Instagram plans to expand it worldwide in English very soon. The feature is debuting first on Reels because, as the platform notes, short-form video is the format where users most often discover new creators and communities. It’s also the area where algorithmic influence is strongest, making it a natural place to pilot more open and customizable controls.

But Reels is only the beginning. Instagram confirmed that the tool will eventually extend to the Explore tab, giving users the ability to shape the broader discovery experience across the app. Over time, more surfaces could adopt the Your Algorithm settings, signaling a major shift in how Instagram thinks about recommendations.

This move comes at a moment when users across platforms are increasingly demanding clarity about algorithmic decisions. Conversations around digital well-being, personalization, and feed manipulation have pushed social networks to reveal more about how their systems work. Instagram’s latest effort attempts to balance transparency with ease of use, offering a clean, understandable interface that keeps technical complexity behind the scenes.

The introduction of Your Algorithm also reflects Instagram’s broader strategy to present itself as a platform that listens to its users. For years, frustration has grown over feeds that feel opaque or unpredictable, especially as AI-driven recommendations have become central to engagement. With this tool, Instagram positions itself as giving power back to the user—at least in small, practical ways.

Whether these controls will meaningfully reshape the content people see remains to be tested. Algorithms are notoriously complex, relying on hundreds of signals beyond user input. Still, giving people a clearer voice in what their feeds become is a shift many users have been hoping for.

As Instagram continues refining the feature and expanding it across the app, Your Algorithm could become a defining part of the platform’s future. And for the millions of users who want more say in the endless river of content flowing through their screens, it may feel like a welcome change.