Popular Social Media platform Instagram has introduced several new features designed to make it easier for users to connect with friends and enjoy content together.
From reposting favorite Reels to exploring new places on a map and discovering what friends are watching, these updates bring a more social, interactive experience to the platform.
One of the standout additions is the ability to repost public Reels and feed posts. With this feature, you can quickly share content you love with your followers. Reposts appear in your friends’ feeds as recommendations and are saved in a dedicated “Reposts” tab on your profile. You can also add a personal note by tapping the repost icon, typing into the thought bubble, and saving it. Reposts always credit the original creator, so if your content is shared, it may be shown to people who don’t follow you helping creators expand their reach.
Instagram has also launched a new interactive Map that lets you explore location-based content and stay in the loop with where your friends have been. You can choose to share your last active location with selected friends, and turn this feature off anytime. You’re in full control: you decide who can see your location, whether it’s just Close Friends, mutual followers, a few individuals, or no one. You can even block location sharing in specific places or with certain people. If you do enable it, your location updates when you open or return to the app.
The map works even if you don’t share your location. You can still explore posts, stories, and Reels from people you follow, as long as the content has a tagged location. These posts stay visible on the map for 24 hours. Notes from mutual followers with location tags also appear temporarily. The Instagram Map is available at the top of your DM inbox and is now rolling out in the U.S., with more regions to follow.
For parents of teens using supervised accounts, Instagram provides tools to manage the location-sharing feature. Parents get notified if a teen enables location sharing and can view and control who they’re sharing with, allowing space for conversations around safety and privacy.
Instagram is also expanding the Friends tab in Reels, a feature that shows public content your friends have liked, commented on, or engaged with. If you’re part of a Blend, a group-based recommendation feed, you’ll see content based on that too. It’s a great way to discover new Reels and talk about them with the people you care about. You can find the Friends tab at the top of the Reels section and switch back to your standard Reels feed anytime.
To give users more privacy, Instagram now offers controls over what’s shown in the Friends tab. You can hide your likes and comments, and mute activity updates from specific people if you’d prefer a quieter feed.
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Altogether, these updates aim to make Instagram a more social and personalized space one where staying close to friends, discovering new content, and exploring the world around you all come together in new, meaningful ways.
