Instagram users can now pause notifications with ‘Quiet mode’

San Francisco, Jan 20: Meta has introduced a new ‘Quiet mode’ on Instagram, which will allow users to pause notifications whenever they want to take a break from the social networking platform.

Once the new mode is enabled, users will not receive any notifications and their profile’s activity status will change to let people know, the company said in a blogpost on Thursday.

Moreover, the platform will automatically send an auto-reply when someone sends users a direct message (DM).

Users can easily customise their Quiet mode hours to fit their schedule and once the feature is turned off, the platform will show them a quick summary of notifications so they can catch up on what they missed.

“Anyone can use Quiet mode, but we’ll prompt teens to do so when they spend a specific amount of time on Instagram late at night,” the company said.

The new mode is available to users in the US, the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and will roll out to more countries soon.

The company also introduced new features that will allow users to tell the platform what content they don’t want to be recommended to them.

Users can now choose to hide multiple pieces of content in the Explore page that they are not interested in and the platform will try to avoid showing them that type of content.

Moreover, the platform has also expanded its feature that allowed users to hide comments and DMs containing specific words.

Users can now add a word or list of words, emojis or hashtags that they want to avoid, like “fitness” or “recipes”.

“In addition to providing teens with more ways to manage their time and experiences on Instagram, we want to help parents be more aware of the choices their teens make,” Meta said.

“Parents can now also view accounts their teen has blocked,” it added.