The Direct Messaging (DM) section of Instagram is extremely important. It’s not the core of the app, but if it were to disappear in the blink of an eye, you’d see more angry people than Meta could dream of handling—that’s how essential it has become to the experience. I probably spend more time in the DM section than elsewhere on the app.
Yesterday, IG announced a bunch of new features that will make sending and receiving DMs a lot more convenient and enjoyable. After all, communication should never be a difficult thing. Let’s dive into some of the cool upgrades that your DMs will be getting on Instagram.
Translate Direct Messages From and Into 99 Supported Languages
Social media makes it easier than ever to make friends from all across the world. The major thing that limits that for a lot of us is the language barrier. Sure, you could copy every message your new foreign friend sends and paste it into Google Translate, but that’s clunky.
Instagram will make things a lot easier now, by allowing you to translate messages that are in different languages straight from your messages. Just long-press on the message and tap Translate. The app supports over 99 languages to do this with!
Share Music Directly From Your Conversations on Instagram
Is there a new song that you love, and you want to let your friend know about it as quickly as possible? Instead of having to send a reel with that song or go to your respective music streaming app to find a link, you’ll now be able to share a preview of the song directly from your messages.
Just open the sticker tray, click on Music, and you can find any song to share a 30-second snippet of, as long as it is in IG’s audio library.
Schedule Messages to Send at the Perfect Time
Looking to wish your friend a happy birthday as soon as the clock switches over to the new day? Or perhaps you want to send a message to a friend in another time zone as soon as they wake up? Either way, it’d be nice to schedule a message to send exactly when you want it to, even if you’re away from your phone.
Well, you can do that now. Just type the message, long-press on the send button, and then you can choose exactly when you want to schedule that message for.
Pin Messages in Your Chats
A lot of chat applications provide a way to pin a message to the top of the chat. That’s perfect when that message is important or something that shouldn’t be missed for one reason or another. Now, Instagram joins the club by adding that capability.
To do this, just long-press on the message, image, reel, or whatever, and then tap “Pin”. Each chat can have up to three messages pinned.
Invite Friends to a Group Chat With the Power of QR Codes
If you have a group chat for a group of friends, for your family, or for some other kind of specialized purpose, you might have times when you want to add new people to that chat pretty easily. The best thing is that you don’t need to have one person do all the adding now. With a QR code, everyone else can scan and join the chat right away.
To view the QR code for a group chat, open it, tap the name at the top, and then tap on Invite Link. From there, you’ll be able to select QR Code and have it pop up on your screen. It can be scanned in person or you can send an image of it to others.
