Instagram recently introduced three control features, ‘Instagram Quiet Mode‘ aimed at pausing notifications, ‘Hidden words to the recommendation‘, and ‘Multi-select for Not interested‘ to filter content you don’t wish to see.
According to Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, these features were introduced to help people, especially teens, manage their time and what they see on Instagram.
According to a blog post on Meta’s official page, teens told Instagram that they sometimes want to take time for themselves and might be looking for more ways to focus at night, while studying and during school.
Instagram says that it will now prompt teens to enable Quiet Mode when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night.
If you’d want to test out these new control features. here’s a step-wise guide on how to enable them.
1. Instagram Quiet Mode
This feature allows you to select a time of day or week when you do not want to be bothered by notifications.
When you enable this mode, your profile’s activity status will be changed, and an automated response will be sent if you receive a message. This feature will help you reduce your screen time by making the app less distracting.
If you’re worried of missing important notifications with this feature turned on, worry not as Instagram has got you covered. When you turn off quiet mode, you’ll get a quick summary of all the notifications you missed.
This mode is currently available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but Instagram hopes to expand its availability soon.
However, the feature appears to have already started rolling out to other regions since I can access the pause all notifications feature.
How To Enable Quick Mode
- Open Instagram and go to settings.
- Click on notifications and tap on pause all to enable the quiet mode.
- A box will prompt up with a heading saying, ‘You won’t receive push notifications, but you’ll be able to see new notifications when you open Instagram‘.
- From the prompted box, you can select the duration for which you want to pause the notification.
2. Hidden Words to Recommendation
Instagram already has the ability to hide words, but extending the ability to hide recommendations is a new addition to this feature.
Users can already hide comments or direct messages using hidden words that they choose. With this feature turned on, users ca now avoid specific words, emojis, or hashtags.
If a person selects ‘fitness’ or ‘recipes’ as the words they want to hide, Instagram will no longer recommend any content with those words in the caption or hashtag.
How To Enable This Feature
- Open Instagram and go to settings.
- Open privacy settings and tap the ‘hidden words’ option.
- Go to ‘custom words for messages and comments’ and add words, emojis or phrases of which you don’t want any content to be visible on your feed.
3. Multi-Select for Not Interested
Users may be unaware of this option, but the ability to mark posts as ‘not interested‘ is already available on the platform.
You can now multi-select posts from your Instagram’s ‘explore page‘ with this new feature.
How To Use This Feature
- Open your Instagram and tap the search icon from the options listed below.
- Long press the post you want to remove and click on the ‘Not Interested’ option.
- A pop-up will appear below saying, ‘we’ll recommend fewer posts like this in the future’ with an option to hide more.
- By clicking on the hide more option, users can now select multiple posts to hide.
Additional Features
In addition to these features, Instagram has updated its parental supervision tools to better support teens and give parents more control.
Previously, parents could set time limits, schedule breaks, and be notified when their children shared a report, among other things. Parents will now be able to see their child’s blocked accounts and privacy settings, as well as be notified when the child changes the settings.
