If you’ve ever opened Instagram, gotten invested in a video, and then watched helplessly as it vanished in favour of something else, you’re not alone. Instagram has just announced a big change to fix this common frustration: the feed will no longer auto-refresh the moment you open the app after a brief break. 

This change was confirmed by Instagram head Adam Mosseri during a recent Ask me anything (AMA) (via @_blunderchief), where he addressed one of the platform’s most annoying issues — known internally as the “rug pull.” This UI feature would automatically refresh the feed when users returned to the app, often causing the post or video users were watching to disappear.

As Mosseri explained, Instagram used to load fresh content right when users opened the app. To fill in the time, it displayed older, already downloaded posts, which would then vanish once the feed updated.

While the goal was to boost engagement, Mosseri admitted that the “rug pull” actually created more frustration than benefit, with users forced to scroll back and hunt for the post they were originally interested in.