Instagram might look a little different by the end of the year.
Tech giant Meta has spent months tinkering with the social media app, quietly testing new functions before rolling them out in updates.
But here are some of the upcoming changes, as well as the ones you might have missed.
Well, kind of.
Story Highlights are the row of circles below user profiles that display, well, Instagram Stories the user has posted. After picking a few stories to promote, they can set a display picture for the bubble and name it.
But after quietly testing it out last year, Story Highlights are to move to a dedicated tab on user profiles, marked by a heart between the grid and Reels tabs.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, admitted in November that the move will be ‘contentious’.
‘We’re trying to figure out a way to improve the profile and try to get more of the content above the fold and simplify it,’ he said on Instagram Live.
‘And one of the ideas we’re exploring is integrating highlights into the grid.’
‘Contentious’ is one way of putting it. On X, some users said they would be ‘so done’ if Instagram changed Story Highlights.
‘Instagram is removing highlight bubbles WTF? Bro, that’s my whole personality, I’m nothing my acc is nothing without them,’ one said.
Another added: ‘If Instagram removes highlights, I’m so done? I actually won’t exist on that app.’
But as Mosseris said, Highlights aren’t gone for good. ‘Bear with us as we try to figure out a simple, effective solution that empowers creators to shape their profiles but also keeps the experience simple for the viewer,’ he added.
Last month, Instagram began letting users upload ‘trial reels’.
Rather than be shared with your followers or appear on the Reels tab, these reels are only visible to a handful of random users.
This is to encourage creators to experiment with their content more without worrying about it flopping.
‘If you feel good about a trial reel and how it’s performing, you can choose to share it with your followers with one tap or decide to set up the reel so that once the trial is over, if it’s performed well, it gets automatically shared with your followers,’ Meta said of the change in a blog post.
To share a trial reel, users can upload one as normal but before sharing, just need to tape the ‘trial’ toggle.
This is one you likely already have – you can now schedule direct messages up to 29 days in advance. All you have to do is long-press the ‘sent’ button in any chat and set a date and time.
As Instagram’s support page notes, you can only schedule text messages – photos, videos, GIFs or stickers have to be sent in real time.
Some changes you might not have clocked include editing already sent messages, adding nicknames and releasing 17 new sticker packs.
Since December 13, Instagram users can’t follow hashtags like they do users.
Before, posts including these tags would appear in feeds. Instagram had tools that filtered which posts popped up, but it led to some people saying completely irrelevant posts clogged up their app.
So Meta removed the function altogether in its longstanding bid to stamp out spammers.
‘You will still be able to use hashtags in your posts and search with a hashtag to discover related posts,’ Instagram said last month.
‘Want a fresh start?
This is what Instagram began asking some users in November as the platform tested a new way to reset content recommendations.
As the app increasingly relies on algorithms to personalise people’s experiences, Instagram recommends content from people they don’t follow on their Explore, Reels and Feed tabs based on who they follow and what posts they engage with.
But Meta has said that users worldwide will soon have the power to reset their recommendations completely. This can be done under ‘content preferences’ in settings.
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