TikTok's new 'Manage Topics' tool gives you more control over your For You feed; here's how to use it

TikTok is introducing a new "Manage Topics" feature that will give you more control over what you see on your For You feed, the company announced on Friday. The new feature is rolling out to users in the U.S.

With the new tool, you can tailor your For You feed to show you more or less of certain topics.

You can access the feature by going into your Settings, selecting "Content Preferences" and then clicking the "Manage Topics" option. From there, you can customize your preferences for different topics, such as sports, travel, humor, current affairs, dance, and food. You can do so by moving the slider to adjust how much you do or don't want to see that sort of content in your For You feed.

If you are uncertain about which type of videos fall under a category, you can click the "information" button next to a topic. For instance, TikTok says the "Creative arts" topic includes "painting, drawing, graphic design, and art-related tutorials."

TikTok says these selections will help the app either show more or less of a topic in your For You feed. Of course, this doesn't impact the content you see from accounts you follow. The company notes that it may take some time for the app to personalize your feed based on your selections, so don't expect the customization to be applied instantly.

Although TikTok introduced a feature last year that allowed you to refresh your For You feed to retrain the app’s algorithm about the content you enjoy, this new feature lets you take a more focused approach to customizing what you see on the platform instead of just starting over fresh.

And, while you can individually hold down on a video to click the "not interested" button to signal to the algorithm that you don't want to see a certain type of video, you can now go directly into your settings and tell the app you don't want to see that sort of content on your For You feed. It's worth noting that although you can already select keywords and hashtags to filter out content from your For You feed, this new feature gets rid of having to manually enter a bunch of things you don't want to see.