Can I turn off Reels on Instagram?

Not with a single setting. Instagram offers smaller adjustments, like disabling 'Reels made for you' notifications and marking individual reels Not Interested, but none of them remove the Reels tab from the bottom navigation bar or stop reel links from opening.

Does using the Following feed remove Reels?

It removes Reels from your main feed, since Following shows only posts from accounts you follow in order, with no recommended content mixed in. Reels still exist elsewhere in the app, including the dedicated tab and inside Explore.

Does marking reels Not Interested reduce how many I see?

It can retrain what the recommendation system shows you over time, but it works reel by reel and never zeroes out. New reels still populate the tab and the Explore grid regardless of how many you've dismissed.

How to Turn Off Instagram Reels on iPhone (What Actually Works)

There is no switch inside Instagram that turns Reels off. What exists are smaller settings that reduce how pushy Reels gets, and none of them remove the tab, the shelf on Explore, or a link someone sends you. This is what each option actually does, and what's left once you've tried all of them.

What Instagram actually offers

Three settings get repeated in every guide to this question. Turn off "Reels made for you" notifications, under Notifications → Live and Reels. Switch your main feed to Following, which drops recommended content including reels. Mark reels Not Interested one at a time to retrain what gets suggested.

All three do something. None of them touch the part most people mean when they say they want Reels off: the tab itself, sitting in the bottom navigation bar, and the reel player that opens the moment someone sends you a link.

Why there's no real off switch

Reels is Instagram's answer to TikTok, the same way YouTube Shorts is. It's the format Meta is currently optimizing engagement around, which makes an off switch a direct hit to the thing the feature exists to grow. The settings that do exist are aimed at relevance, not removal, tuning which reels you see rather than whether you see any.

What's left: the web version

Instagram's web version runs the same core app: feed, Following, DMs, Stories, all functional. And because it's a web page, a Safari extension can act on it before anything renders, which the native app's sandboxing doesn't allow.

On the web version, that means:

The Reels tab disappears from navigation, not just the notifications about it.
Reel links resolve differently, so a link someone sends still opens instead of erroring, but without dropping you into the vertical Reels player.
The main feed goes chronological, following-only, with the algorithmic Home mixed feed hidden underneath it.
Explore's reel-heavy grid hides too, while search inside Explore keeps working.

None of that requires retraining an algorithm one dismissal at a time. It's just gone.

Making the web version the one you land on

Same problem as any of these fixes: you have to actually open the web version instead of tapping the app icon out of habit. A personal iOS Shortcut, run automatically when the Instagram icon is tapped, can hand you off to the fixed web version instead.

That's the whole mechanism behind DoomOff: a Safari extension that removes Reels, Explore's grid, and Stories where you choose to, paired with a guided Shortcut that makes the cleaned-up version the default. Every toggle has a live preview before you turn it on, so you can see exactly what changes.