Instagram launches ‘Quiet Mode’ that will temporarily stop notifications from the app

Instagram launched a slate of new features aimed at younger users, including the new Quiet Mode that will allow them to temporarily stop receiving notifications. The social media app has also updated its options to filter content and keywords from various sections of the app.

The Meta-owned platform announced the new Quiet Mode on Thursday as part of a new set of features designed to help teenagers to manage their usage time. “Teens have told us that they sometimes want to take time for themselves and might be looking for more ways to focus at night, while studying and during school,” Instagram said in the announcement post.

Once Quiet Mode is enabled, users will temporarily stop receiving notifications from the app, including alerts for incoming Direct Messages. When the feature is on, and a new message arrives, the sender will receive an automated reply informing them that the recipient has yet to be notified about their DM because they have Quiet Mode activated.

Profile pages of Instagram users who will enable Quiet Mode will also display an “In quiet mode” badge. The company said there would be an option to customize the hours when the feature will be enabled. Once that set duration ends, the app will display a summary of notifications it withheld from when Quiet Mode was in use.

While Quiet Mode is a follow-up to previous teenager-centric features Instagram introduced, the company said users of any age could use the functionality. However, as part of Quiet Mode, teenagers will receive a prompt when the app observes they are using Instagram late at night for “a specific amount of time.”

Instagram’s Quiet Mode is now available to users in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The company says it is hoping to expand its availability to other countries, but no specific timeline was provided at the moment.

Users will also be able to filter content from the Explore page that they do not like to see through an update introduced with Quiet Mode. Instagram said users will now be able to select several posts and mark them as not interesting. “We’ll aim to avoid showing you this kind of content going forward in other places where we make recommendations, like Reels, Search and more,” Instagram added.

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