Instagram announced Friday that you can now go back and see Reels you’ve previously watched, thanks to a new “Watch History” feature. Rival TikTok has had a viewing history feature for several years.
This new feature allows you to go back and find videos that you were unable to save. For example, you might get a call while watching an interesting Reel, accidentally close the app while watching, or get distracted by something else and lose your place in the Reels feed.
“Have you ever tried to go back to a Reel you saw on Instagram, but just can’t find it?” said Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, in a statement. “Well, we have a new feature that can help you. You’ll see (Watch History) in (Profile), (Settings), under (Activity), so you can see all the Reels you’ve watched so far.”
Similar to TikTok, you can sort your watch history by date, past week or month, or a specific date range. Additionally, you can delete Reels from your play history if you wish.
Instagram’s watch history is a little more flexible compared to TikTok’s, as you can sort videos chronologically, reversely chronologically, or by author.
According to Instagram, this feature has been highly requested by users. Previously, users found workarounds to recover lost videos, such as downloading the data from the app and examining it to retrieve the playback history. This feature greatly simplifies the process of finding lost videos and eliminates the need for this kind of workaround. Additionally, the viewing experience on Instagram Reels will be on par with TikTok.
Since its launch as a TikTok clone, Meta has built Instagram Reels with features already available on the popular short-form app. Most recently, Instagram enabled creators to connect multiple Reels to a series and started supporting picture-in-picture display. Both are already available on TikTok.
