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What Replaced the Option To Follow Topics on Pinterest

Posted on · Updated by Nadia Rowan in Pinterest

verified_against vendor-docs (the maker's own help pages, and nothing else) · verified_on · what these mean

Search results still show a red Follow button sitting on a Pinterest topic page, while the company’s own help article on how to follow topics on Pinterest no longer exists at its old address. I loaded it on 3 September 2026 and the URL answers with a permanent redirect to a page called Refine your recommendations, whose only topic control removes things.

That gap between the guides and the documentation is the answer to the question, so here is what each side says.

What the help centre used to say

A capture of that page from 8 December 2019 opens with a definition: “Topics are feeds of Pins about a particular category. If you want to see more Pins related to that topic on your home feed, follow the topic.”

The mechanics were a tab. On desktop you went to your profile, clicked the Topics tab, scrolled the suggestions, opened a topic and clicked Follow. On the phone you went to your profile, tapped the Topics tab, tapped Find topics to follow, picked what you wanted and tapped Done. Unfollowing lived in the same tab, under a Following label.

Worth flagging, since the earlier version of this page claimed otherwise: the app had the feature. The 2019 documentation gives the mobile path in as much detail as the desktop one. Anyone told to open a browser because the Pinterest app “has not yet included” topic following was sent the long way round for no reason.

What replaced the option to follow topics on Pinterest

The redirect lands on Refine your recommendations, reached from your profile. On desktop the tabs are Activity, AI content, Interests, Boards and Following. In the app the set is close but not identical, with Pins in place of Activity and a GenAI interests tab added.

Interests is the tab that inherited the word topics, and its documented job is one directional: remove topics you no longer wish to see recommendations for. There is no companion control that adds one.

So the steering changed hands. You can now tell Pinterest what to stop showing you, and you have no documented way to tell it what to start showing you. For a service whose entire value is what surfaces in the feed, that is a real loss, and I have not found anything in the current help centre that gives it back.

One footnote from Pinterest’s own note on that page: customising GenAI interests is available on desktop and Android only, with iOS listed as coming soon. The tabs you see depend on the device in your hand.

What Pinterest still documents as followable

Two things, both of them accounts rather than subjects.

People and creators, followed from their profile. Boards, followed from the ellipsis icon next to the board title on desktop, or the ellipsis at the top right of the board in the app. The current guide describes the home feed as Pins from the people and boards you follow, mixed with recommendations, which matches.

Boards are the closest substitute for a retired topic, because a well kept board on one subject behaves like a curated feed of it. The catch is printed on the same help page: finding boards on Pinterest is currently available only on desktop. From a phone you are largely down to following the person behind a Pin you liked.

Two categories are excluded from recommendations automatically, whatever you do in the tabs: archived boards and secret boards. Secret boards appear in the Boards list with a lock, and you can switch recommendations from them back on if you want them counted.

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