Instagram has been on a roll lately. The giant photo-sharing platform has been launching new features and quietly testing other features it plans to ship publicly. From testing dark mode to teasing app shortcuts and finally launching Threads, its standalone messaging app for your close friends.
The Facebook-owned company is testing four new and exciting features.
Group Stories
Its parent company recently killed Group Stories on the Facebook app but this feature will soon be showing up on Instagram at least according to renowned reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong.
Instagram is testing Group Story pic.twitter.com/zNKaV19kYA
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 5, 2019
It is expected that once this feature rolls out, you’ll be able to share your Stories to a particular group by selecting “Share to Group Story“. It will come in handy when sharing stuff on Instagram to people not in your Close Friends list.
It will interesting how it will be used when it goes public especially since Instagram already allows users to open group chats using Story stickers.
GIF Story Replies
Finally. Instagram users have been dying to get gif support which came last year and let users reply to their DMs using GIFs. It looks like GIFs will also soon be supported in Stories.
To reply to a Story, you’ll click on the GIF button that will appear next to the text field. A menu will pop up with different GIF options and you can select the one you want and send. There’s a search button too.
Instagram is testing GIF Story Replies pic.twitter.com/d9ef3K8tfr
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 5, 2019
So far, people are already excited about it.
Well, this certainly looks fun. More exciting replies will make engagement even more enjoyable. https://t.co/wTIF6rcOgl
— Nika Stewart (@NikaStewart) October 5, 2019
https://twitter.com/WSig/status/1180581094581657602
More features.
Other features Instagram is testing is a new Explore peek UI and a comments/Discussion sticker.
Instagram is testing a new Explore peek UI pic.twitter.com/v5HUtgw8IH
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) October 5, 2019
Instagram's unreleased "Comments" sticker now has some bare minimal functionality: "Thoughts? Viewer response here" pic.twitter.com/VMrCwUhdau
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) September 28, 2019
Other new features the company has been testing since this year began include:
- Birthday picker for the Android app
- New Boomerang modes
- New Grid Layout mode for Stories
- New set of colorful icons for Story Camera modes
- Notifications filter
- Shipping the App and Websites Settings to the app.
- Comment Sharing
Some of these features will be announced tomorrow according to Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram. Hopefully, these features roll out globally soon because users can’t wait.
