Ever since I deleted my Facebook account, Instagram has taken its place as the social network I visit most often to check what my friends are up to. I’ve been on the app for something like 15 years now, and during this time, I’ve learned a trick or two that improve the experience (or at least make it less annoying). Here are 10 Instagram hacks that will enhance your privacy, reduce the amount of junk in your feed, help you reset your algorithm, and more.
On every social media app, I like to set up filters to mute offensive keywords, but you can use keywords to block almost anything you don’t want to see. On Instagram, you can use filters to easily block spammy comments and offensive messages. While you can customize your filter list, I just looked up a list of offensive phrases, and quickly added it to my IG account, then added a few additional terms.
You can do the same thing by going to your Instagram profile page, and tapping the three-lines menu in the top-right corner in Instagram. This opens the Settings and activity page, where you can select Hidden Words. It lets you add multiple words, as long as you separate them with a comma. Once added, Instagram will block comments and messages containing those terms.
You can also add mute keywords for posts appearing in your feed. Go to Instagram Settings > Content preferences > Specific words and phrases. On the Content preferences page, go to Sensitive content and Political content, and you can limit those types of posts and videos from showing up on your feed too.
Reset your Instagram algorithm
Every once in a while, my Instagram algorithm goes haywire and I’m forced to reset it. After all, I mostly open this app to see my friends’ updates and cat videos, and once my feed starts showing me too much Hyrox content (a “sport” I couldn’t care less about), I know I’m in trouble. If something like this happens to you, there are two ways to reprogram your feed. The easy option is to just look for a reel you enjoy (such as a cat video), and swipe upwards a few times till you reach a non-cat video, then navigate away. Repeat this process a few times and your feed will be back to more cat videos and less Hyrox (or anything else).
If that doesn’t work, or if your feed is too far gone in the wrong direction, then you can go to Instagram Settings > Content preferences > Reset suggested content to reboot it entirely.
Remove tracking links from Instagram
When you share any post, reel, story, or other type of content on Instagram, the app tracks who you’re sharing it with, even if you send the link outside Instagram. You can see this by tapping the Share button on any post, and selecting Copy link: Paste this link in any text editor, such as Apple Notes or Google Keep, and you’ll see that the link has tracking parameters at the end, such as “?igsh=…” or “?utm…”. That helps Instagram identify that you’ve shared the link.
There’s no way to disable this tracking, but you can manually remove it from each link before you send it to someone. Just paste the URL it as usual, then delete everything after the question mark.
Force Instagram to open DM links in your preferred browser
Credit: Pranay Parab
Whenever you open a link in Instagram, the app opens it in an in-app browser. This is the least privacy friendly option, as Instagram can then track which websites you’re visiting quite easily. You can partially stop this by tapping the three-dots button in the top-right corner of Instagram’s in-app browser and selecting Open in external browser.
There’s no way to make this the default setting for all links, but you can set it as default for links you receive via DM. To do this, go to Instagram Settings > App website permissions > Message links and turn on Open in external browser.
Limit your Instagram notifications
After you post something, Instagram loves to spam you with notifications every time a few people interact with the post. Even if you don’t use Instagram for a day or two, you’ll still get a deluge of notifications from the app. I don’t face this problem because I never allow Instagram permission to send any notifications on my devices, but that’s not an option for everyone. If you don’t want to turn off notifications entire, you can choose to receive only the useful notifications from Instagram. To do this, go to Instagram Settings > Notifications and review all the options available to you. I particularly like the Messages only option, which only sends me an alert when someone DMs viaon the app.
To further limit notifications, go to the Following and followers section on this page, and disable Account suggestions. Similarly, you can go to Messages and disable Message reminders and all varieties of channel notification settings. You can also go to the Calls section and turn off Video chats, which has the added bonus of disabling video calls on Instagram, which I’ve never wanted to use.
What do you think so far?
Hide your online status and disable read receipts on Instagram
For some reason, Instagram shows other people when you’re online. If you want to be more discreet, go to Instagram Settings > Messages and story replies > Show activity status and turn the setting off. (On the previous page, you can select Show read receipts and turn it off to stop people seeing if you’ve read their messages too.)
Hide the “typing” indicator in Instagram messages
When someone is messaging you on Instagram, the app shows you an animation to tell you that the other person is typing. More often than not, this feature only makes me keep the app open longer while the other person types their message, which is probably why Instagram’s added it in the first place. If you don’t want to see the typing indicator in a chat, you can disable it: Open any chat in Instagram and tap the contact’s name up top. Go to Privacy and safety and turn off Typing indicator. Sadly, you’ll need to do this manually for each of your Instagram chats.
Enable end-to-end encryption to make Instagram more secure
Credit: Pranay Parab
Instagram chats are not encrypted by default, which means that the company can read all your messages. If you want to beef up your security, consider using end-to-end encryption for your chats. Just like Telegram, Instagram hides its end-to-end encrypted chat feature, and makes you enable it manually for each chat. You can do so by opening any chat in Instagram, tapping the contact’s name up top, selecting Privacy and safety > Use end-to-end encryption.
Automatically clear your Instagram search history
Your Instagram search history shows up whenever you try to search for anything on Instagram. This can be embarrassing if you’ve looked up something really silly (or slightly naughty), and someone else sees it. to prevent this, you can clear your searches by tapping the search bar in Instagram, and selecting Clear all, or tapping the x next to each search term.
However, there’s also a way to automatically clear your search history on Instagram: Go to Instagram Settings > Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Search history > Keep searches for, and select 3 days, which is the minimum time for automatically deleting your searches.
Reset your Instagram ad preferences to protect your data
There’s no way to block ads on Instagram, but you can reduce the amount of your data that Instagram uses to show you those ads. Just go to Instagram Settings > Accounts Center > Ad preferences > Manage info. You can go through each option on this page and turn off everything you can. Under Categories used to reach you, select Remove on every option.
You can choose Don’t allow us… in these two categories: Ads in other apps and Ads about Meta. Finally, you can select Activity information from ad partners > Review setting, and pick No, don’t make my ads more relevant.
