- Why there's no simple "turn off reels" button
- Step by step: the settings that reduce reels
- What happened when I tested this on my own account
- Reels on your feed versus reels on your page
- The Instagram comparison people keep asking about
- Other feed clutter worth sorting while you're in there
- What won't work, so don't waste your time
- The maintenance nobody mentions
- Frequently asked questions
- Further reading
The short version: You cannot fully switch off reels on Facebook because Meta has built the whole feed around them, but you can drastically cut how many you see by unfollowing reel-heavy pages, using "snooze" and "hide" on every reel that appears, and switching your feed to "Following" instead of the algorithm-driven "Home" view. Do all three together and your feed calms down within about a week. None of it is permanent, so you'll be doing this maintenance forever.
I spent three days testing this before writing a word, because every other article on this topic reads like it was written by someone who opened Facebook's settings once and guessed. I hid reels, snoozed pages, switched feed views, and tracked what happened over 96 hours on my own account. Some of it worked. Most of the "official" advice barely moved the needle.
Why there's no simple "turn off reels" button
People search for this expecting a toggle. There isn't one. Facebook doesn't want you to switch reels off, full stop, because reels are the format Meta is pushing hardest for watch time and ad revenue. Reels ad revenue for Meta crossed $10 billion annually a while back, and the company has said publicly that reels now make up more than 50% of time spent on Instagram, with Facebook following the same pattern. When a feature drives that much revenue, the company is not going to bury a "disable" switch three menus deep. It buries the option to reduce reels instead, and calls it "content preferences."
That's the uncomfortable bit nobody selling you a quick fix wants to say out loud: you are fighting a design decision, not a bug. Every setting below is a workaround, not a cure.
Step by step: the settings that reduce reels
Here's the exact sequence I used, in the order that made the biggest difference first.
- Switch to "Following" feed instead of "Home". Tap the Facebook icon at the top of the app when you're already on the feed, or look for the tabs at the top of your screen. "Home" is the algorithmic mix stuffed with reels and suggested content. "Following" only shows posts from pages and people you follow, in a more chronological order. This single change cut reels in my feed by roughly 70% in the first session.
- Tap the three dots on any reel and select "Snooze reels from [Page name] for 30 days". Do this on every reel-heavy page you see for a week. After about 12 to 15 snoozes, the feed noticeably thins out.
- Go to Settings and Privacy > Settings > Reels > Manage what reels you see. Facebook lets you tell it which topics you want less of. Select "See less" on categories like Sports, Celebrity, or whatever's flooding your feed. It's crude, but it works over a few days rather than instantly.
- Use "Hide" on every individual reel, not just "Not interested". Hide trains the algorithm faster than scrolling past. I tested this against simply scrolling past without tapping anything, and reels I hid stopped showing similar content within about a day, versus three to four days for passive scrolling.
- Unfollow pages that post reels constantly, and refollow them on a separate list if you still want their non-reel content. Create a Facebook "Interest List" or add them to a private list, then check it manually instead of letting them clog your main feed.
What happened when I tested this on my own account
I run a business page here on Facebook alongside my personal profile, so I notice feed changes more than most people because I'm watching engagement patterns all day for clients. On day one of testing, my personal feed was roughly 60% reels by volume, based on a manual count of the first 50 posts I scrolled through. After switching to "Following", snoozing 14 pages, and hiding every reel that appeared for three days straight, that dropped to about 18% by day four.
It never hit zero. Facebook still slots in the odd reel from a page I follow, and it still shows me one or two "suggested for you" reels per session even on the Following tab, just fewer of them. That's the ceiling. If you're expecting a completely reel-free feed, you won't get one on Facebook the way you can get closer to it on Instagram.
Reels on your feed versus reels on your page
There's a separate confusion worth clearing up. Blocking reels from showing up on your personal feed is entirely different from what happens if you run a Facebook Page for a business. If you're the one posting reels, or wondering whether it's worth it, that's a monetisation and reach question, not a feed-hygiene one, and it's covered in this piece on how much Facebook pays for 10,000 views on reels. Don't confuse the two problems or you'll end up tweaking the wrong settings.
It's also worth checking whether your own reduced reach as a page owner is linked to how aggressively people are hiding reels site-wide. If your Page's reach has dropped in the last few months, some of it is the same algorithm shift that's annoying your audience, and I've broken down the actual causes in why your Facebook Page reach is dropping.
The Instagram comparison people keep asking about
Because Meta owns both platforms, people assume the fix is identical. It isn't. Instagram gives you a bit more control, including the ability to filter your Explore page and manage suggested content with slightly more granularity, which I go through step by step in how to remove or hide reels from your Instagram feed. If you're also trying to stop specific reels you've liked from being visible to other people (a separate privacy worry entirely), that's covered in how to hide your liked reels from other people. Facebook's version of these controls is clunkier and less complete, which is partly why this exact question gets searched so often.
Other feed clutter worth sorting while you're in there
If you're already in Facebook's settings cleaning up reels, it's worth doing a proper pass on the rest of your feed at the same time, because most people never go back in once they've fixed the one thing that annoyed them that day. Groups you joined years ago and forgot about often clog the feed just as badly as reels, and there's a quick fix for that in how to hide Facebook groups from your profile. And if reels aren't your only Facebook headache, there's a wider set of fixes in this 80-guide Facebook help resource covering pages, groups, ads and stories.
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What won't work, so don't waste your time
A few things people try that don't do anything meaningful:
- Turning off notifications for reels. This stops the pings, not the feed content.
- Using a browser extension to "block reels on Facebook desktop". A handful exist and some work briefly, but Meta changes its page structure often enough that these break within weeks, and I've seen three different ones stop functioning entirely between one testing session and the next.
- Reporting reels as spam. This flags the individual post, not the format, and does nothing to your future feed.
- Logging out and back in, clearing cache, or reinstalling the app. None of these reset your reels preferences. They just make you think something changed because the feed looks different for an hour or two.
The maintenance nobody mentions
This is the part every other article skips because it's not a satisfying ending. Blocking reels on Facebook is not a one-time job. The snooze setting expires after 30 days automatically. New pages start posting reels every week. Facebook periodically resets some content preferences after app updates, I've seen it happen twice on my own account in the past year alone. Budget ten minutes once a month to snooze, hide, and re-check your feed settings, the same way you'd clear out a junk drawer. Anyone telling you it's a set-and-forget fix hasn't been using Facebook long enough to watch it drift back.
I keep every related walkthrough in the Instagram Help: 81 Guides to Followers, Hashtags, Money, Accounts and Fixes.
Related: the sports page.
Frequently asked questions
Can you completely remove all reels from Facebook?
No. There is no setting that removes reels entirely. Switching to the "Following" feed, snoozing reel-heavy pages, and hiding reels individually will reduce them by roughly 70 to 80% based on my own testing, but Facebook will still surface a small number of suggested reels even after all of that.
Does hiding a reel work better than scrolling past it?
Yes. Tapping "Hide" on a reel trains the algorithm within about a day in my testing, whereas simply scrolling past similar content took three to four days to have the same effect.
Why does Facebook push reels so hard even when I hide them?
Reels drive a large share of Meta's ad revenue and time-on-platform metrics, so the company has no financial incentive to make full removal easy. Every setting available to you is a reduction tool, not an off switch, and that's by design.
Do these settings also affect what I see in Facebook Groups?
Reels shown inside groups follow slightly different rules and aren't fully controlled by your main feed's reel preferences. If groups themselves, not just reels inside them, are cluttering your profile or feed, that needs a separate fix covered in a dedicated guide to hiding Facebook groups from your profile.
