It feels like there’s always something new in Instagram, whether that’s new fonts, the “last active” feature or Story highlights. We thought we’d round up the latest things for you to catch up on, and share a few rumoured features!

Features available to you now…

A new type of polling sticker

There’s the 2 option sticker that you’ve probably used by now to ask this or that, but Instagram have also released a sliding scale sticker which allows your viewers to answer your question on a sliding scale. You can customize this by changing the emoji that is used to slide by tapping the emoji’s above the keyboard, or if you can’t see the one you want there, tap the plus icon at the right of the line of emoji’s. You can also change the colour of the text or box once you start typing your question in there by tapping on a colour that appears but (as of writing this) you can’t use the dropper to choose the exact colour.

Important to remember that the Story creator can see the options that people choose as well, as they can with the “this or that” polling sticker!

Focus

You may have already spotted this function in Stories, but if you look down at the bottom where it shows what type of Story it is, there may be one called Focus there.

Focus is the Instagram Story version of Portrait Mode on the iPhone which blurs out the background. You can take a photo by tapping the button, or a video by holding down on the button, and it works pretty well!

Focus is available on iPhone SE, 6S, 6S+, 7, 7+, 8, 8+ and X and select Android devices.

Upload Multiple Stories at once

Ooh, this is a good one! If you’re the sort of IG’er that likes to do a few talk to camera Stories at once, then you’ll know just how frustrating it is when it uploads all in the wrong order. There’s now a feature that allows you to upload a few items at once – we don’t have access, but saw this on the Instagram blog so head over there for more info!

Download all your data

With the recent scandals involving Facebook, a lot of people were saying about how they were going to delete their account. Facebook released a tool to allow you to see what information they held on you, but what some people seemed to forget was who owns Instagram.

Instagram have now released a tool to show you everything you’ve ever posted on the platform. To access it, head over to the data-download page, log in to your account and enter your email address and password when prompted.

Instagram will then send you a link to a file with your photos, comments, Story archive, profile information “and more”. It can take up to 48 hours for the data to be sent to you, but it can be interesting (or totally cringeworthy!) to see previous comments.

Sharing to stories

Only available to Android users at the moment, you can now share any post to your Stories. It’s basically like retweeting, or when you screenshot a post to share, but now will attach the creators name to the post. It looks like you can adjust the image in your stories, and tap to show the caption, but we haven’t been able to play with it yet.

If you don’t like this function, go to your options page and scroll down to “Allow resharing to Stories” to turn it off.

Rumoured features…

Usage Insights

According to the Verge, Instagram will soon show users how much time they spend in the app. An app researcher found the feature in the code of the Android app which was confirmed by the Instagram CEO as a feature that would be coming soon. Kevin Systrom posted on Twitter that they were “building tools that will help the IG community know more about the time they spend on Instagram — any time should be positive and intentional.”

Mute Users

Did you follow your aunt because you felt like you had to but you don’t really want to see the stuff she posts? If you don’t want to rely on the Instagram algorithm just filtering her out, then this rumoured feature might be just what you’re looking for.

In-App Payments

Another feature confirmed by Instagram but not yet rolled out is the ability to accept payments in the app. It’s actually been in use for about a year but with a very limited audience. It’s unclear how useful this feature would be for influencers, but we’re sure you’ve got some ideas!

Which of the rumoured features would you most likely use??