Instagram Reels Not Working 11 Easy Troubleshooting Fixes

If your country isn’t listed, you know immediately that Reels not appearing for you on Instagram is not a glitch that you can fix. [1] X Research source If you want to watch Reels, you can try using a VPN.

If multiple devices on the network are seeing the same thing, the issue might be more for your ISP instead of a simple connection problem. If you’re using your mobile data plan to access Reels, try switching to using Wi-Fi instead. Or, if you’re using Wi-Fi, see if Reels works on your cellular data connection.

With this off, you should be able to see Reels. If you have an Android, you can change this option even more. Choose when you want to see high-resolution media: Never, over Wi-Fi only, or cellular + Wi-Fi. If this is set to Never or Wi-Fi only, you won’t be able to watch Reels without a stable Wi-Fi connection.

In Android, go to Settings > Apps > Instagram > Storage & cache > Clear cache. For iPhone and iPad, you’ll have to delete and reinstall the app instead since there aren’t settings in General that will let you do this task automatically.

On Android, go to Settings > System > System Update. On iPhone and iPad, go to Settings > General > Software Update.

Any of your drafts or posts that you’ve saved to your phone will be deleted once you uninstall the app.

Note that while this may clear up your Reels not working by forcing the platform to update, opting into beta may introduce other issues. Beta testers are more for testing experimental features before they are released and letting Instagram’s developers know if there are hiccups with those features.