If I could have back all the time I’ve spent searching Instagram in vain for a Reel I saw in passing — trying for weeks to come up with the right combination of hashtags or keywords that would bring it back — well, I’d have back hours, I’d guess. Enough time to go to the gym or call my mom. These are the sacrifices I make to pursue my goal of pushing the known human limits of how much short-form video content can be consumed before one is driven to madness.
Which is why I was thrilled — Ecstatic! Rapturous! Ready to smash that like button! — upon learning from Instagram head Adam Mosseri that Instagram has added a new “watch history” feature.
This new tool lets you scroll back through all the Reels you saw over the last 30 days.
To access the watch history, go to your profile, then the Settings menu > Your activity > Watch history (scroll all the way down). You can sort from oldest to newest, or even by author.
Hallelujah!
Finally, I can use this to go back and find that weird video I saw last week, I forgot to save, but want to show someone today.
Despite my initial reservations, I’ve come 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 I get shown on TikTok. (I see a lot of front-facing 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 outside. I don’t understand why this is different.)
Instagram knows that most people are now spending time on the app watching Reels and DMing their friends — and often DMing Reels to their friends. It’s rolled out a handful of new features that cater to this. You can now see the videos your friends “liked,” as well as the “Blend” feature in DMs, where you can essentially share your algorithm with a friend to show them the crazy videos you get shown (this feature is actually really fun).
Just recently, Instagram also launched a big redesign that puts messaging and Reels at the forefront of the bottom nav bar.
It’s slightly sad that Instagram, as we knew it, has really changed — it’s no longer an app for people to post brunch pics. But I do appreciate that it’s been launching new features like “Blends” in DMs to accommodate new behavior. (Meta’s new product/feature launches aren’t always so good; Vibes, the new AI slop feed in its Meta AI app, is a total dud.)
Now, the only downside to this new Reels history feature is that it goes back only 30 days — that’s not far enough!
(One note: As of Friday afternoon, there was a small bug that makes it seem as if you can pick a custom date range further back than 30 days — Meta confirmed to Business Insider that you can’t, and that there’s a fix in the works.)
TikTok already has the watch history feature, and it will let you go back six months. Which is far better when you know you’ve seen some funny or interesting thing and want to pull it back up.
Is it mildly creepy to see your own watch history? Slightly! Feels a little embarrassing when you notice you went down a 10-video rabbit hole of one person’s account, like an older man who makes near-daily videos complaining about the parking situation on Nantucket or a 20-something who filmed his mom yelling at him about how he needs a haircut, and then you had to see all his other videos to see if the mom was right. (I can’t tell you why I was so rapt by this, other than to say I appreciate the full breadth of the human experience.)
But we’re way past the point of feeling creeped out by realizing Instagram remembers what videos we’ve seen. Of course it does! Duh!
Look, I came to Instagram to do two things: feed advertisers data on my personal shopping preferences to increase shareholder value, and to LOL at some funny videos. And guess what? I’m going to do both until my brain oozes out of my ears.
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