Instagram has started rolling out a new feature that allows users to view their feeds in chronological order. This method was available in the site’s early days, but that changed after the Meta-owned platform began to rely on algorithms and AI to present more’relevant feeds.’ Apart from the standard Home view, users may now choose between Favourites and Following. The change appears to be server-side, however if users are unable to view it, they should update the app from the appropriate app store.
To choose Favorites or Following, users must go to Home and touch on the Instagram branding in the top left corner. Users will have the ability to pick between the two alternatives here. Favorites, according to the firm, provides users the newest from accounts they’ve added to their favourites list, such as best friends and favourite producers. Additionally, posts from accounts in your Favorites will appear higher in your home feed. Following, on the other hand, displays posts from the people you’ve chosen to follow. Both Favorites and Following will display posts in chronological order, allowing you to catch up on recent posts quickly.
Instagram had been exploring this feature for a while, and it also offered a Home option for regular AI-powered feed views. In a few places, the feature was being tested with mostly iOS users. With one exception, the new version is now available to all users. The only difference is that Instagram has deleted the ‘Home’ option on the Android version, while we can still use it on the iOS version. Android users can either click the back option or close the app to return to the previous sequence.
Instagram had previously explained why the platform introduced AI-driven feeds: “When we first launched in 2010, Instagram was a single stream of photos in chronological order. But as more people joined and more was shared, it became impossible for most people to see everything, let alone all the posts they cared about. By 2016, people were missing 70 percent of all their posts in Feed, including almost half of posts from their close connections. So we developed and introduced a Feed that ranked posts based on what you care about most.”
Meta added the same feature on Facebook, and users can switch to a ‘Recent’ feed via Settings.
