Instagram is redesigning its app to put Reels and Instagram Shopping on display, moving the app’s two primary bottom navigation titans to a prominent spot on your main home screen with dedicated shopping‑notification alerts in an effort to drive up engagement during the year’s highest spending season.
The change was announced by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri in a Reels video, where he explained that the platform’s growth is being driven by DMs, Reels and recommendations — and that the design is finally catching up to how people actually use it.
What we’re covering in the new Instagram navigation
The bottom bar will now include five destinations:
- Home
- Reels
- DMs
- Search/Explore
- Profile
That lineup prioritizes two behaviors Instagram says are driving usage — viewing short videos and messaging — by allotting each a permanent, thumb‑friendly place in the dock.
Worth mentioning is what you find missing from the bottom row: a specific button for creating new posts. You can still add posts, but the button for doing so shifts to the top left of the app. Swipes are now familiar: right for DMs, left to open the Stories camera. Instagram plans to roll out the redesign over the next few months, and some users may have seen tests earlier as part of Instagram’s ongoing experimentation.
Why Instagram is making the navigation change now
Usage patterns have shifted. Mosseri said the app’s recent growth — he referred to a three‑billion‑user milestone — (three billion what?!) has been driven by DMs, Reels and recommendations. That jibes with company comments on earnings calls that time spent on Instagram rose after it leaned into AI‑driven recommendations and short‑form video, and that Reels engagement and reshares reach the billions per day across Meta’s apps.
It also speaks to a larger social shift: People find and watch content in algorithmically sorted video feeds and share it amongst friends and family privately more than they do publicly. Here, Pew Research Center says half of U.S. adults and a large majority — 71 percent — of those between the ages 18 and 29 use Instagram, a demographic overrepresented among short‑form video consumers and communicators. Market trackers like Data.ai say short‑form video is well‑suited to today’s pace of mobile attention.
What this means for creators and brands on Instagram
Reels moves further to the forefront, so creators who can tell a story at high speed, vertically and with strong hooks gain an edge. Because Reels is fixed to the bottom bar, discovery there will be weighted far more toward algorithmic distribution than on follower feeds — especially for accounts that have not yet accumulated a large audience.
The place of the compose button adds a touch of friction for the old‑style photo posts, but it doesn’t remove them. You can still share single images, carousels and longer videos — you’ll simply start those actions from the top left. The calculus for brands is straightforward: Invest in Reels‑first creative and communicate with messaging that deepens relationships, according to where customers are in the relationship funnel, whether it’s customer care or a product drop.
DM‑centric features will also start to be more important. Instagram has already deepened its focus on private sharing with offerings such as Broadcast Channels and Notes. And a separate DMs tab in the bottom bar is likely to encourage more one‑to‑one and one‑to‑few interactions, transforming the inbox into a prime distribution surface for creators and businesses.
New controls: tune your Reels topics and interests
In addition to the layout, Instagram has been trying a feature that enables you to “tune” recommendations by adding or removing topics it thinks you like, beginning with Reels. In settings, folks will encounter a list of inferred interests and they can prod the algorithm in the direction of or away from them — a practice that’s grounded on best practices for recommendation transparency.
If it functions as expected, topic tuning could cut down on irrelevant Reels and make it easier for niche communities to break through the noise. It also gives creators a clearer signal: If audiences can steer their interests, what content will be recommended is more likely to match those declared themes.
The strategic read on Instagram’s redesign direction
This overhaul further pushes Instagram into a video‑ and messaging‑first identity. The bottom bar dictates where most attention goes, and the algorithm controls are a not‑so‑subtle bow to user agency in the face of ever‑increasing scrutiny of recommendation systems. For Meta, the gamble is that mixing high‑velocity Reels discovery with intimate, DM‑based sharing will keep time spent up and lift monetization as Reels ads come of age.
The risk is plain to see: power users with a preference for photo‑centric workflows could view the new layout as a divergence from Instagram’s heritage. But the trend line is clear. If your Instagram experience begins to feel different soon, that’s no accident — and it revolves around the two behaviors the company bets have defined its future: watching Reels and talking about them through direct messages.