Instagram now lets you mute people from your feed and Stories – here’s how

Victoria Woollaston June 22, 2020

Instagram is finally adding a much-needed mute button to stop select people’s posts appearing in your feed, after recently launching a similar tool to its Stories tab.

First spotted by developer Jane Manchun Wong in the code for the Android Instagram app, it appears the feature is now rolling out to select users and will be widely available over the coming weeks, according to Instagram.

Of course, if you really dislike someone’s posts that much you could just unfollow them, especially if their account is public, without losing the ability to stalk their posts. However, if their account is private and you don’t want to lose access to it completely, muting is the way to go.

It should be noted that muting someone’s posts from appearing in your feed doesn’t stop them from being able to contact you. You’ll still see DMs from them, and you’ll still get notifications if they tag you in a photo or comment. If you want to stop someone accessing your account, you can block them.

Below we’ve explained how to mute a person from your Instagram Stories tab, how to mute them from your feed (when the feature becomes widely available), and how to block someone.

Mute an Instagram Story

Open Instagram.
Swipe through the accounts in your Story tab at the top of your feed.
Press and hold the profile picture of the person you want to mute.
Select Mute Story from the menu that appears.

You need to press and hold the profile picture for a few seconds. Simply pressing the profile picture will open that person’s Story. Stories you’ve muted will still appear at the end of the Story tab but won’t feature a colorful ring around them. Muted stories also won’t automatically play when you start watching your Stories tab

To unmute a story you’ve muted, repeat the steps above, and select Unmute.

Mute someone from your feed

If you spot someone you want to mute while scrolling through your feed, press the menu button (three dots) to the right of their username.
In addition to the existing “Report” and “Unfollow” option, you’ll now see a Mute button.
Press Mute and select whether you want to mute that user’s posts, or their posts and Stories.

Block someone

Press the menu button (three dots) next to a person’s username in your feed, or via their profile.
Select Block. You can also unfollow users from this menu as well.