Instagram's Your Algorithm reached the main feed on June 10, 2026. How to customize your topics, what it does not let you do, and what it changes for creators.
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Your Algorithm is an Instagram feature that shows you the topics the app has decided you are interested in, and lets you edit them. You can see the list, remove topics you do not want, and add ones you do, and the recommendations recalibrate around your changes. It arrived on the main feed on June 10, 2026, having launched first on Reels and then on Explore, which makes the main feed the biggest of the three since that is where most people spend their time. Here is how it works, how to use it, and what it changes for anyone posting content.
It is a personalization tool that makes the recommendation system legible and adjustable. Instagram infers a set of topics from what you tap, watch, save and share, shows them to you in plain language, and lets you tell it directly what you want more and less of. Before this, you could only influence recommendations indirectly, by engaging or not engaging; now you can state a preference outright.
The reason it is possible now is a technical shift. Instagram's recommendation system works on content embeddings, mathematical representations that group similar posts together but do not map to anything a person could read. Large language models let Instagram translate those embeddings into named, human-readable topics like rescue dogs or Mediterranean recipes. That translation is what turned an opaque system into one you can see and edit.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, framed the rollout around user agency, noting that as algorithmic recommendations took over feeds across the industry, people lost the sense of control that following specific accounts used to give them. He has described the system as one-sided: it learns from what you do, but you have not had a way to tell it what you want. Your Algorithm is the attempt to change that.
The feature rolled out gradually across Instagram's main surfaces, reaching the main feed most recently.
| Surface | Status |
|---|---|
| Reels | Live (first surface to get it) |
| Explore | Live |
| Main feed | Live since June 10, 2026 |
| Stories | Not announced |
| Ranking by accounts you follow | Not supported (acknowledged request) |
Edits apply to the system immediately, though visible changes in your feed take a few sessions to show, since the algorithm needs new impressions to test the updated weighting. Mosseri has said topics are just the starting point, with people, moods, and content types flagged as things Instagram is working on next.
There is no cap on how many topics you add, remove or adjust, so you can keep refining as your interests change.
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One limitation matters more than the rest: you cannot use Your Algorithm to prioritize posts from accounts you actually follow. It works only with interest-based topics, not specific accounts, so asking for posts from people you follow returns nothing.
This is the most common criticism of the feature, and Mosseri has acknowledged it directly, noting that following accounts used to be how people shaped their own experience and that recommendations quietly displaced it. For now the dedicated Following feed, reached from the home screen tab options, is the only way to see purely follow-based content. Your Algorithm sits on top of recommendation-based ranking rather than replacing it.
The structural change matters more than the feature. When users can name the topics they want, content that does not fit a clear, nameable topic gets harder to surface, because the algorithm has to be able to file your content under something a person would actually type. Four practical implications.
Niche clarity is now a distribution issue, not just a brand one. An account that posts travel, food and finance is harder to recommend, because no single topic captures it. The cleaner the niche, the more easily the algorithm classifies the content and surfaces it when someone adds that topic.
Engagement still ranks posts within a topic. User-side controls decide which topics your content is eligible for; engagement still decides which posts win inside each topic. Comments, saves, shares and DMs remain the strongest signals.
Early engagement compounds. Posts that pull strong engagement in the first hour get pushed to more topic-matched users. A slow start means fewer later impressions, however well the post fits the topic.
DM activity increasingly reads as a quality signal. Instagram has pointed to how often people share posts through DMs as a sign of value, which suggests content that drives DM conversations can earn distribution that comment-only content does not.
If users now pick the topics and the algorithm ranks posts within them by engagement, the lever you control is the engagement your posts generate, specifically comments and DMs, the two signals that push a post up the queue inside a topic.
This is what a comment-to-DM setup does. You post a Reel with a clear call to action, comment a keyword to get the link, and every commenter is automatically sent a DM with what you promised. The comment count rises, the DM volume rises, and both feed the signals Instagram uses to decide who else sees the post inside their topic-matched feed. For a creator in a defined niche, that is what makes Your Algorithm work for you rather than against you: people tell Instagram they want your topic, and your posts are the ones with the engagement to surface inside it. The mechanics are in setting up an Instagram auto DM, and it runs on Meta's official API, replying only to people who engaged, which is what keeps it compliant.
Comment-to-DM replies to every commenter automatically, lifting the comment and DM activity Instagram reads as signal. Free plan, no card.
It is a personalization feature that lets you see and adjust the topics Instagram uses to recommend content to you. You add, remove or adjust topics like rescue dogs or parenting humor, and recommendations recalibrate around your choices. It launched first on Reels, then Explore, and reached the main feed on June 10, 2026.
Open the app, go to your home feed, and tap the menu in the upper part to find Your Algorithm. The panel shows the topics Instagram has inferred from your activity, which you can scroll, remove from, or add to using search.
Open the panel, remove topics you do not want and add ones you do. Changes apply immediately, though visible shifts in the feed take a few sessions to show. There is no limit on how often you can edit the list.
You can remove topics one at a time, but there is no one-tap reset that wipes your entire inferred interest profile and starts from zero. Removing topics individually is the closest option. Clearing search and browsing history affects activity logs but does not reset the interest model.
Not through Your Algorithm, which works only with interest topics, not specific accounts. To see only follow-based content, switch to the dedicated Following feed from the home screen tab options. Instagram has acknowledged that prioritizing followed accounts is a frequent request but has not committed to building it.
Usually an outdated app or a delayed rollout to your account despite the global launch. Update through the App Store or Google Play, and if it still does not appear after a day or two, the rollout has not yet reached you.
Not as of the main feed launch. It is live on Reels, Explore and the main feed only, with no Stories integration announced. Instagram has mentioned future work on people, moods and content types, but nothing specific to Stories.
Two things matter most. Niche clarity, so content clearly fits a single recognisable topic the algorithm can classify, and engagement, since posts with strong comments, DMs, saves and shares rank higher inside their topic. A comment-to-DM setup lifts both comment counts and DM activity, which improves a post's chance of surfacing in topic-matched feeds.
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