Instagram is easily one of the most popular social networks in the world with over 1 billion active monthly users. The app was initially geared towards sharing photos of friends, family or incredible locations in single posts but has since adopted a Stories feature à la Snapchat. Millions of Instagram users post stories each and every day. Much like Snapchat, anything you post is only available to view for 24 hours before it disappears forever… unless you create a highlight reel of stories that’s permanently available to view on your profile that is.
Stories incite creativity, primarily because they offer a number of cool features that can be applied to every photo and video you post. By far one of the most popular Stories features is Boomerang that creates a short video that’ll be played on repeat.
But now Instagram is upgrading Stories with a new feature called Layout. The latest addition will allow users to share up to six images in a single Story post.
Announcing the feature, the social media titan said: “Strike a pose. And another pose. And then another.
“With Layout, you can now capture and share multiple photos in your story — a new, creative way to express yourself. Check it out!”
The new Instagram feature is live right now on Android and iPhone and is located next to Boomerang. Once you’ve swiped across to it you’ll be given a number of options that let you customise how many photos you want to share at once and at which orientation.
Before the introduction of Layout, the only way to post a Story with multiple images was to use a third-party app or copy a photo from your gallery and paste it in a text box, as noted by The Verge.
The new feature will undoubtedly be popular amongst Instagram’s legion of daily users, especially during the Christmas period where you might not be able to squeeze all your far-flung family members in a single photo.
Layout certainly isn’t the only new exciting addition to Instagram this year. In 2019 users of the photo sharing app have been treated to a dark mode that ditches the app’s retina burning whites for friendlier deep blacks.
At the moment Instagram dark mode is available for every iPhone running iOS 13 and Android device running Android 10.
By far the most controversial change to Instagram this year has been with the removal of like counts for some users. While still in its testing phase, the new feature only lets users see the number of likes for their posts, not other profiles they search for or in their feed.
You can read more about how Instagram hiding like counts works here.