Discover the three recently introduced Instagram features right now
This week Instagram three new features for Posts, Reels, and Stories. If you post regularly, you may have already noticed these innovations, but for the rest of us viewers, there are some fun new options to explore.
First, Instagram now allows you to add text and stickers to photos and carousels. If you’re used to adding these elements to Reels and Stories, you’ll feel right at home here: when creating a new post, select an image and then tap the Writing button to add text to the image. Choose the font, color, background, alignment, size and position of the text, just like in a story. Tap Readyto save your text changes.
To add a sticker, tap the Galeriethen select a photo you want to put on your post. Drop the sticker where you want it, and zoom and drag to make it larger or smaller. You can tap the newly created sticker to change its shape to a circle, heart, star, or square. You can even adjust which layer of the image this sticker sits on (i.e. above or below other elements in the post). Press and hold the sticker and move your finger up or down to set the sticker’s new layer.
Next, Instagram is adding new fonts, animations, and effects for text in Reels and Stories. To experiment with them, select an image or video you want to add to your Story or Reel and tap the Writing button. Browse through all the fonts (I count 14, but it is unclear which of them are new) and tap the Animations key to cycle through the different animations. There are three of them: Typewriter, which types your text; Pop, which gives your text a brief explosion effect; and Jump, which makes your text jump into the screen. You can also click the Effects key to apply an effect to these options. Right now I see two effects available: Sparkle, which sprinkles stars on your text; and Neon, which adds a glow effect.
Finally, Instagram is introducing larger carousels. For a long time, you could only include 10 photos in a post. Editing takes a long time, often leaving out good photos. Now Instagram allows you to add up to 20 photos in a single carousel. Whether that’s too much or not, people will probably use three, five, or 10 photos in their posts. If so, just keep scrolling.
These new features follow Instagram’s last major feature update: Music on the profilea new option that allows you to add a song to your Instagram profile. It’s similar to music profiles on MySpace, believe it or not, but amazingly it still exists.
In addition to these new carousel options, Instagram has also introduced technical improvements to its text elements in Reels and Stories. You can now use various new fonts, animations, and effects to make your text more engaging. Additionally, as you explore the new Instagram features, you might discover the option to add multiple stickers in a single post, allowing for more creativity and customization.
