Instagram adds Watch History so you can find Reels again

Instagram is borrowing an idea from TikTok, introducing a Watch History section that will be welcomed by many users.

While undeniably useful, pretty much the only thing that is surprising about this particular feature is that it has taken so long to appear in the app. It solves the problem of viewing a Reel within the app – and then never being able to find it again.

There are good and bad things to report about the new Watch History feature, starting with the disappointing news that it only maintains a list of the videos you have watched in the last 30 days. Quite why this limit exists is not clear, but it is likely down to the fact that the doomscrolling sensibility of many Instagram users would render a non-time-limited list immense and unmanageable.

Announcing the feature, head of Instagram Adam Mosseri says:

If you go to Profile, and under Settings under your Activity, there’s Watch History now, so you can see every Reel that you’ve ever watched. You can sort it from oldest to newest, or newest to oldest, you can go to a specific date or date range, and you can even filter it down to a specific person or account that posted that Reel, so hopefully now you can find that thing that you were trying to find that you couldn’t find before.

As Mosseri explains, it is possible to filter the list in a variety of ways to home in on particular content, and this is welcome. But the existence of these options does raise further questions about the reason for or sense in limiting history to just one month.

At the moment, the list is non-editable – meaning, to the chagrin of some people responding to Mosseri, that there is currently no way to remove videos from the list.

Just update to the latest version of the Instagram app to gain access to this feature so you can try it out for yourself.