3 Instagram Settings to See Your Friends' Posts Again

The default feed ranks content by predicted engagement and often favors viral Reels from accounts you never followed. The Following feed shows accounts you chose in roughly chronological order.

Tap the Instagram logo at the top of Home and select Following. Suggested posts can still appear occasionally, but most recommendations from unfamiliar accounts disappear.

Instagram does not let you make Following the default. The app returns to Home each time you open it, so you must select Following again. Desktop web does not offer the tab; use the app or a mobile browser.

Explore is built almost entirely from recommendations. To dismiss one quickly, long-press a tile in the grid and choose Not Interested without opening the post.

The same menu includes Hide more, which lets you dismiss several posts at once.

Later activity can outweigh those dismissals, especially if you watch or share similar material elsewhere in the app. Use this control to tidy Explore, and use Following when you want a feed based on accounts you selected. The long-press shortcut is limited to the app, and desktop web does not appear to offer Not Interested.

Hidden Words mainly filters comments and message requests. Feed captions use a separate control.

To set it up, go to your profile → the three-line menu → Settings and Privacy → Hidden Words. Toggling on Hide comments and messages activates Instagram’s automatic offensive-content detection. Below that, you can add your own custom list of words, phrases, and emojis. Any comment or DM request containing a match is hidden before you see it. A list of roughly 40 terms is enough to filter out common MLM spam, political keywords, and crypto solicitations.

For filtering suggested posts by caption or hashtag keywords, the path is different: tap the three dots on any suggested post, select Manage Content Preferences, then Specific Words and Phrases. Instagram periodically moves this menu, so search for Manage Content Preferences if the path has shifted.

Your primary Hidden Words list will not filter feed posts. Add caption and hashtag terms again under Specific Words and Phrases if you want them applied to suggested posts.