Instagram wrote yesterday: We are excited to announce a number of new DM features to help you better connect with friends, making your messaging experiences more flexible and enjoyable. People connect daily on Instagram through posts and stories, but especially through messaging, so we’re excited to be bringing these new messaging features to Instagram.
Edit your messages
Whether it’s a typo or something just doesn’t sound right, you can now edit messages up to 15 minutes after sending. To make a change, press and hold on the sent message, then choose “edit” from the dropdown menu.
Pin chats to top of inbox
For chats with your best friends or family, or simply once you want at the top of your inbox, soon you’ll be able to pin up to 3 group or 1:1 chats for easy access.
To move a chat to the top of your inbox, swipe left or tap and hold on the chat, then tap “pin”. You can choose to unpin a thread at any time.
Toggle read receipts in DMs
Read receipts conveniently let other’s know you’ve read their message. Now, you can choose to turn read receipts on or off, for all of your chats or specific ones.
To turn it on or off for all chats:
Go to account settings
Tap Messages and story replies
Tap Show to read receipts
Toggle read receipts on or off for all of your chats
TechCrunch reported that the ability to edit your DMs lets you fix a typo or change things around if your message doesn’t quite sound right.
To edit a message, you need to press and hold it, and then choose “edit” from the drop-down menu. Once you edit a message, the purple text bubble will have an “Edited” label on top of it to notify the other person that the message has been changed.
According to TechCrunch, Instagram also recently started allowing all users to turn read receipts off, for all of their chats or specific ones. You can turn off read receipts for all chats by going into your account settings, tapping “Messages and story replies” and then clicking on the “Show read receipts” button and then toggling them off.
Meta (parent company of Instagram) reported you can now save your favorites stickers in DMs for easy access. Press and hold on the sticker you want to save and you’ll find them at the top next time you go to stickers.
Additionally, stickers, GIFs, videos, photos and voice messages are available when you reply to a message.
In my opinion, these new features are likely to make Instagram users eager to try them out. I think the stickers and GIFs will be well used, and the ability to toggle read receipts and to pin things to the top of your Instagram is a great idea.