Instagram’s latest feature will change your life

If I could take back all the time I spent searching in vain on Instagram for a Reel I saw in passing – trying for weeks to find the right combination of hashtags or keywords that would bring it back – well, I’d be hours back, I suppose. Enough time to go to the gym or call my mom. These These are the sacrifices I make in pursuit of my goal of pushing the known human limits of how much short-form video content can be consumed before going crazy.

That’s why I was thrilled – ecstatic! Enthusiastic! Ready to smash that like button! — after learning from Instagram head Adam Mosseri that Instagram has added a new “watch history” feature.

This new tool lets you scroll through all the Reels you’ve seen in the last 30 days.

To access your watch history, go to your profile, then Settings menu > Your activity > Watch history (scroll to the bottom). You can sort from oldest to newest, or even by author.

Alleluia!

Finally, I can use it to go back and find that weird video I saw last week, forgot to save it, but I want to show it to someone today.

Despite my initial reservations, I came to really enjoy Reels. It’s developed a sort of culture of its own, and I’ve noticed that its algorithm leads me to very different types of content than what I’m shown on TikTok. (I see a lot of full-frontal videos of people talking about topics I’m interested in on TikTok; on Reels, I tend to get more slice-of-life videos of people doing things outdoors. I don’t understand why this is any different.)

Instagram knows that most people now spend time on the app watching Reels and DMing their friends – and often DMing their friends. It has rolled out a handful of new features that address this. You can now see which videos your friends have “liked”, as well as the “Shuffle” feature in DMs, where you can basically share your algorithm with a friend to show them the crazy videos you’re shown (this feature is actually really fun).

Just recently, Instagram also launched a big redesign that brings messaging and Reels to the forefront of the bottom navigation bar.

It’s a little sad that Instagram, as we knew it, has really changed: it’s no longer an app for people to post brunch photos. But I appreciate the launch of new features like “shuffles” in DMs to accommodate new behaviors. (Meta’s new product/feature launches aren’t always this good; Vibes, the new AI feed in its Meta AI app, is a total dud.)

Now, the only downside to this new Reels history feature is that it only goes back 30 days – that’s not far enough!

(A note: As of Friday afternoon, there was a small bug that makes it look like you can choose a custom date range older than 30 days – Meta confirmed to Business Insider that you can’t and that a fix is ​​in the works.)

TikTok already has the watch history function and will allow you to go back six months. Which is much better when you know you saw something funny or interesting and want to bring it up again.

Is it a little scary to see your own surveillance history? Slightly! It’s a little embarrassing when you notice you’ve scrolled through 10 videos from someone’s account, like an older man who makes videos almost daily complaining about the parking situation on Nantucket or a man in his 20s who filmed his mother yelling at him about how he needs a haircut, and then had to watch all of his other videos to see if the mother was right. (I can’t tell you why I was so captivated by this, other than to say that I appreciate the full breadth of the human experience.)

But we’re way past the point of feeling creeped out by realizing that Instagram remembers the videos we’ve seen. Of course yes! Duh!

Look, I came to Instagram to do two things: provide advertisers with data on my personal shopping preferences in order to increase shareholder value, and lol with funny videos. And guess what? I’m going to do both until my brain comes out of my ears.