Feed
How Instagram Feed Works
All posts from accounts you follow on Instagram will appear in your feed. Instagram does not hide posts from the people you follow.
Instagram's technology uses different ways, or signals, to determine the order of posts in your feed. These signals are used to help determine how your feed is ordered, and may include:
- Likelihood you’ll be interested in the content
- Date the post was shared
- Previous interactions with the person posting
At times, you might see a post from a few days ago in your feed. This is to make sure you don't miss a post from someone you follow.
You can see when a photo or video was posted by looking at the bottom of the post, below the caption and comments.
Just double tap a photo or video to like it or tap below the post. If you’ve accidentally liked a post, tap
again to unlike it.
When you unlike a post, the story that you liked the photo or video will disappear from Activity. If the person who shared the post has push notifications turned on, they'll still get the notification that you liked the photo or video.
To save a post:
Tap below the post you want to save. When you save a post, it's visible to you from a private section of your profile.
To save a post to a collection:
- Tap and hold
.
- Select a collection you've already created or tap
to create a new one.
To see a post you've saved and the collections you've created:
- Tap
or your profile picture in the bottom right to go to your profile.
- Tap
in the top right, then tap
Saved.
Only you can see the posts you've saved. When you save someone's post, they're not able to tell that you've saved it.
When you turn on notifications for someone you follow, you'll get a notification every time that they share a photo or video. To turn notifications on or off:
- Go to their profile.
- Tap Following, then tap Notifications.
- Tap
next to Posts, Stories or IGTV to turn notifications on or off.
- Or tap
next to Live Videos and select any notification option.
- Go to their profile by searching for their username or tapping their username in Feed.
- Tap Following, then tap Notifications.
- Tap
next to IGTV to turn notifications on or off.
- Or tap
next to Live Videos and select any notification option.
If you'd like to turn notifications on or off for multiple people, you'll have to visit each profile and turn them on or off individually. Keep in mind that you may get a push notification when someone you follow shares something for the first time in a while, whether or not you have notifications turned on for that person.
People aren't notified when you turn notifications on or off for them.
Learn more about managing your notification settings.
Reply to someone in a comment thread by mentioning them in your comment. They'll get a notification in their activity feed to view the comment.
To reply to someone:
- Go to the photo or post.
- Tap Reply below any comment and add your comment.
- Tap Post.
If you’ve accidentally double tapped or tapped below a post, you can remove the like by tapping
again.
Things to keep in mind:
- Very soon after you remove a like, the like alert will disappear from other people's Activity.
- If you've accidentally liked a photo and then unliked it, the person who posted it will still get a push notification if they have notifications turned on.
- If you like, unlike and then re-like a photo, the person who posted will only receive one Activity alert for the latest like and one push notification for the initial like if they have push notifications turned on.
To turn sound on or off while watching a video, tap anywhere on the video while it's playing.
You can also turn sound on by pressing the volume buttons on your phone while a video is playing. Once the sound is on, you can use the buttons to adjust the volume.
For videos on IGTV, use the volume buttons on your phone.
You can zoom in on any photo or video you see in Feed, on someone's profile or on the grid in Search & Explore. To zoom in on a photo or video, pinch using two fingers.
We want to show you ads from businesses that are interesting and relevant to you, and to do that we may use information about what you do on Instagram and Facebook (our parent company) as well as your activity on third-party sites and apps you use. We also may use information provided by businesses outside of Instagram or Facebook Company Products to decide which ads to show you. For example, you might see ads based on the people you follow and posts you like on Instagram, your information and interests on Facebook (if you have a Facebook account), the websites and apps you visit, or information advertisers, their partners, and our marketing partners share with us that they already have, like your email address.
Learn more about:
- What you can do if you see an ad you don’t like
- Ads and privacy in our Data Policy