Reported October 5, 2026, Instagram is trialing an opt-in setting that makes a full-screen Reels feed the first thing you see when you open the app — with Stories still on top and the traditional feed one swipe away.
2026-10-06 · by Moe Ameen
Instagram is testing a setting that opens the app directly into a full-screen Reels feed instead of the traditional photo-and-post home feed, as reported by Social Media Today on October 5, 2026. The feature was spotted by app researcher Radu Oncescu, who posted screenshots of the in-app explainer on Threads.
Per that explainer, the Reels-first layout keeps Stories along the top of the home screen as usual, and lets you swipe across to reach the traditional feed. The change is framed as an option a user turns on, not a default that is forced on everyone, and you can switch back to the regular feed experience at any time. The rationale tracks usage: more than half of the time people spend in the app now goes to watching Reels, and the format is reported to account for essentially all of Instagram's recent engagement growth.
This is not Instagram's first move in this direction. The platform ran a similar opt-in test in India in 2025, which Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed at the time, placing Stories above a Reels-default home tab with the standard feed reachable from a top-corner icon. (Instagram's dedicated iPad app launched Reels-first the same way in September 2025, though Instagram walked that back to an iPhone-style chronological home tab in a May 2026 redesign.) As with any test, availability is limited and the behavior can change — but the direction of travel is a home screen where the first impression is a vertical video, not a grid of photos. Social Media Today noted that if adoption climbs, Instagram will likely look to make the Reels-first layout the standard for everyone.
A Reels-first home turns Instagram into a short-form video channel first and a photo app second, and it rewards whoever can keep a steady stream of vertical video flowing. The hard part was never posting a Reel — it is producing enough on-brand vertical video, week after week, to own the slot a viewer now lands on. That production problem is the one [Kompozy](/) exists to solve.
Kompozy generates net-new vertical video from a single source or idea, not just edits of footage you already shot: [Persona Shorts](/glossary/persona-shorts) with a face-locked avatar and auto-captions, [Persona Frames](/glossary/persona-frames) composited into a brand-exact [HyperFrames](/glossary/hyperframes) template, Clipped Shorts cut from a long talk or podcast, plus Marketing Shorts, Listicle Video, and Naturalistic Video — every one of them held to a single voice by the [Persona Brief](/glossary/persona-brief). Batch a week of Reels-ready verticals in one pass instead of filming them one at a time, and the Reels-first home has something to show.
Then publish once, everywhere. [Autopilot](/glossary/autopilot) reframes each short with platform-native copy and captions and schedules it across the eight social platforms plus blog and email behind a per-post review gate, so the same vertical that claims your new Instagram home also runs on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Facebook, and the rest. The feed is going video-first; Kompozy is the engine that keeps it fed.
Not yet. As of the October 5, 2026 report, it is an opt-in setting a user turns on, not a default forced on everyone. Stories stay at the top and the traditional feed is one swipe away, and you can switch back at any time. Social Media Today, which reported the test, predicts that if more users switch over and Reels engagement rises, Instagram will likely look to make the layout the standard — but that is the outlet's read, not a stated Instagram plan.
When enabled, opening the Instagram app drops you into a full-screen Reels feed instead of the usual photo-and-post home feed. Stories remain along the top of the screen, and you swipe across to reach the traditional feed. The core change is that the first thing a user sees is a vertical video rather than a grid of recent posts.
It raises the premium on short-form vertical video. If the home screen opens into Reels, the asset a viewer meets first is a short, so a steady cadence of on-brand vertical video becomes the main driver of reach, while photos, carousels, and Stories shift to supporting roles. The practical need is producing more Reels-ready video consistently — which is the bottleneck tools like Kompozy are built to remove.
Yes. Instagram ran an opt-in test in India in 2025, confirmed by Instagram head Adam Mosseri, that set Reels as the default home tab with Stories above it and the standard feed reachable from a top-corner icon. Instagram's dedicated iPad app also launched Reels-first in September 2025, though Instagram reversed that and gave the iPad app an iPhone-style chronological home tab in a May 2026 redesign. The October 2026 test extends the Reels-first direction toward a wider audience on phones.