Instagram is launching a new “Quiet Mode” feature that will let users take a break from receiving notifications and messages when they turn it on.
The feature aims to reduce users’ anxiety about taking time off from the app by silencing incoming notifications, auto-replying to DMs, and setting your status to ‘In Quiet Mode’ to inform friends that you’re not active on the app at present.
You can easily customize your Quiet mode hours to fit your schedule. Instagram will automatically send an auto-reply when someone DMs you during this time.
The company said it will prompt teen users to enable the feature if they’re using the app late at night.
Once the feature is turned off, Instagram will show you a quick summary of notifications so you can catch up on what you missed.
Quiet Mode joins a handful of other screen time management tools Instagram now offers, including daily time spent controls that allow people to track their app use and send themselves alerts, those to configure”take a break” reminders after individual app sessions extend beyond a certain amount of time, and various tools to pause, snooze and unfollow pages, groups, and people to help further reduce engagement with addictive or otherwise unwanted content.
Quiet mode is rolling out now to everyone in the US, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
While Quiet Mode was the highlight of today’s news, Instagram is rolling out a handful of updates as well.
One is the newly added ability for parents to see the accounts their teen has blocked, when using Instagram’s built-in parental control tools. This could make it easier for parents to have discussions with their teens so they can talk about the change, if need be.
Additionally, Instagram is also introducing new features that allow people to pick what content they don’t want to be recommended.
Going forward, Instagram says users will be able to hide multiple pieces of unwanted content from Explore at once, which could help those whose pages resemble their behavior but not their actual interests.
Plus, if you select “Not Interested” on a post in Explore, Instagram will try to avoid showing you this same type of content going forward elsewhere in the app’s recommendations — like Reels, Search and more.
The company says: “Next, while you can already hide comments and DMs containing specific words, we’re now expanding this feature to apply to recommended posts you might see across Instagram. Add a word or list of words, emojis or hashtags that you want to avoid – like “fitness” or “recipes and we’ll work to no longer recommend content with those words.”
