New Instagram test brings back the chronological feed

Image: Instagram

Instagram head Adam Mosseri says the company has started testing two new feed settings, including the much-requested chronological option.

In a video shared today, Mosseri demonstrated a new menu with three options for how Instagram’s feed will display posts. The “Home” setting is what users are familiar with — a feed Instagram creates based on what it thinks will interest each user, ranked using an algorithm. A new “Favorites” feed will be populated with content from a subset of accounts a user chooses (Mosseri says he uses it for siblings, certain creators, and friends). And finally, a “Following” feed will return what many users have been asking for: a chronological stream of posts from accounts you follow.

Mosseri promised the chronological feed would make a comeback during a Senate subcommittee hearing in December. During a Q&A last month, he also said Instagram was “already testing the favorites idea.”

Instagram’s algorithmically sorted feed has been criticized by users since it was first introduced in 2016. Users have complained about going long periods of time without seeing posts from accounts they follow or having older posts at the top of their feeds. Creators have speculated about how algorithms decide which content to push to the top, and Mosseri has written blogs explaining some of the methods used.

Some users have already noticed the new options in the Instagram app. The company didn’t immediately respond to questions about when it expects the change to become available to all users.