Instagram announced today that it’s rolling out the ability for users to edit their direct messages for up to 15 minutes after sending them. The company also announced that users will soon also get the option to pin up to three messaging threads to the top of their inbox.
The ability to edit your DMs lets you fix a typo or change things around if your message doesn’t quite sound right. To edit a message, you need to press and hold it, and then choose “edit” from the drop-down menu. Once you edit a message, the purple text bubble will have an “Edited” label on top of it to notify the other person that the message has been changed. The feature works similar to Apple’s edit feature for iMessage, which launched nearly two years ago.
As for the option to pin a chat to the top of your inbox, you will be able to do so by swiping left or tapping and holding on the chat, then tapping “pin.” You can choose to unpin a thread at any time. The feature can be used to quickly access the chats that you visit often, but it could also be used as a way to remind yourself to come back to a specific conversation at a later time.
Instagram also recently started allowing all users to turn read receipts off, for all of their chats or specific ones. You can turn off read receipts for all chats by going into your account settings, tapping “Messages and story replies” and then clicking on the “Show read receipts” button and then toggling them off. The company first started testing the feature back in November.
The company shared that users can now save their favorite stickers in DMs for easy access by pressing and holding on the sticker you want to save. After you save a sticker, you can find it at the top next time you go to stickers.
By offering a better messaging experience, Instagram is likely looking to get its users to message their friends and family through its platform instead of its rivals’ messaging services.
Instagram is working on a ‘Friend Map’ feature that would let you track friends’ locations
