Instagram Announces Mute Feature So You Can Hide Posts Without Unfollowing People

Instagram today announced the ability for you to mute accounts in your feed, so that you can hide posts from people or brands you may not want to see anymore without needing to unfollow them completely. Instagram says that the change is another update to make your feed "even more personalized to what matters to you."

Account muting will be in the ellipsis menu at the top right of each post, and you can choose to "Mute Posts" or "Mute Posts and Story," to also prevent that account's stories from appearing at the top of the Instagram app. You can also mute accounts by pressing and holding on a story in the story tray, or from a user's profile.

After you mute someone you can still navigate to their profile page to look at their posts, and if you're tagged by them the app will still send you a push notification. Instagram says that people will not be made aware that you muted them, and you can unmute people whenever you like. Facebook has a similar muting feature, allowing users to unfollow other people without directly unfriending them.

Instagram is routinely working on new additions for its photo-sharing social network, with new digital health features like "Time Spent" usage and "You're All Caught Up" notifications said to be coming soon. In March, the company updated its feed algorithm to focus on newer posts, although many users frequently request an option to return to the simple, reverse chronological feed.

Instagram says that the mute feature will be rolling out to its users "over the coming weeks."