Instagram Launches “Your Algorithm” Controls for Reels

Instagram is cracking open its Reels black box with a new AI-powered feature called “Your Algorithm”, giving users a rare look at the topics driving their recommendations and the power to rewrite them in real time. The control lives behind a new icon in the upper-right corner of Reels, showing an AI-generated summary like “Lately you’ve been into creativity, sports hype, fitness motivation, and skateboarding,” plus a full list of topics you can boost, mute, or replace.

Meta says the feature is part of a broader push to “give you more meaningful ways to control what you see on Instagram, starting with Reels,” using AI to let people view and personalize the interests shaping their feed. Users can also type in hyper-specific interests, not just generic buckets, and share their algorithm snapshot to Stories, turning their Reels taste profile into a social flex similar to Spotify Wrapped.

The rollout starts in the US in English, with plans to expand globally and extend Your Algorithm beyond Reels into Explore and other surfaces, putting more of Instagram’s recommendation engine under user control.

The move lands as regulators and governments go after so-called “predatory algorithms,” and as TikTok’s own Manage Topics tool normalizes customizable feeds, pushing Instagram to compete on transparency instead of pure addiction. For creators and brands, this is a quiet but major shift: fans can now actively train their Reels toward niches like runway archive clips, sneaker customs, or underground club nights, sharpening discovery for scenes that live and breathe on specificity.