Two years and change later, Instagram has made it very clear that the algorithm is here to stay. (Those rumors circulating about a return to the chronological timeline back in March were false.) Which, fine, we’ve all adjusted to the once-dreaded Instagram timeline apocalypse. Still, the algorithmic timeline hasn’t been without its snags. Earlier this year, Instagram promised it was going to start showing users newer photos first — mostly because we were all getting tired of opening the app and seeing pictures from two weeks ago. If this has you scratching your head and saying, Gee, showing newer photos first, this sounds almost … like a chronological feed, please know that I am right there with you.
On Monday, Instagram is rolling out another feature that seems poised to be actually good and make you yearn even harder for the days of the chronological timeline. The platform now notifies you when you’ve scrolled back far enough to have seen everything posted by the people you follow in the past two days. Once you’ve seen all the posts, you’ll see a green check mark in your feed alerting you that you’re “all caught up.” It’s similar to once upon a time when you could just scroll back on a Tuesday knowing that you’d already seen everything from Monday, so when you got back to Monday’s posts you knew to stop. But, hey, we’ll take what we can get because [shouts for the people in the back] Instagram isn’t switching back to the chronological feed.
