Instagram Stories tricks you should know

The new update allows you to share posts directly to your Instagram Stories.

By GizBot Bureau

| Published: Thursday, June 7, 2018, 8:00 [IST]

With over 300 million users last November, Stories has gripped Instagram users in a frenzy. Just adding photos or videos is a thing of the past, because Stories is always evolving. With a new addition every two or three weeks, the mood to post more stories lingers all the time. Let’s look at all the new features Instagram has rolled out to Stories and how you can use them.

Share posts to Stories

Some users direct traffic to their posts via stories. They put up messages saying "New post up, check it out". It's much simpler now as Stories comes with the option to share a post directly to it. This can be done as follows -

Step 1: Open Instagram and go the post of your choice. Tap the ‘Send to' icon.

Step 2: In the popup, tap on ‘Add post to your story'.

Step 3: Once in the story screen, tap ‘Your Story' to upload.

You can do the same with posts in other profiles provided that they're public.

Dress up your posts

As you've undoubtedly used them - stickers, texts - on normal stories, you can do the same if you've shared a post. The post itself is doodle-proof, but you can do so in the background. Instagram is tuned to pick up the most prominent colour in the post as the background, but you can easily change it by swiping. Pinch and hold to resize.

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Disable sharing posts to stories

Some users prefer that their posts remain personal and not propagate to other people's stories even if they have a public profile. Instagram has considered this in the upgrade and you can disable such sharing if you aren't comfortable.

Go to your profile and open Settings. Scroll down to Privacy and security, under which you'll find the option ‘Allow others to reshare.' Turn it off.

Miscellaneous features -

You can interact with the stories, for example - tapping on a shared post will let you go directly to the original post. You can also tag users by typing on to the post. Once you upload a new post, Instagram allows you to directly share it to your story, completing both tasks at once.

Another interesting feature is the customisation of messages. Tap on the send icon and add the post to your story. Customise it to your liking by adding stickers, emojis, but instead of adding it to stories, you can opt for ‘Send To'.

The feather in the cap is that Instagram is experimenting with other apps to enable sharing posts and stories directly to the account without linking it.