Learn how to privately like someone’s Instagram story without sending a DM notification in your inbox to prevent cluttering your messages screen.
Like an Instagram story without sending a DM
To like an Instagram story, tap the heart icon between the send message button and the paper airplane icon. Doing so will send the author a like reaction only they can see.
When you like someone’s story, the reaction is shared privately with that person rather than in your DM thread with them. This is a nice way to avoid cluttering your messages unnecessarily. Instagram underscores in its support document that only the person sharing the story can see that you have liked it in their viewer sheet.
The person whose story you liked will get a notification. They will also see a little red heart on your profile picture when they go to see who viewed their Instagram story.
Unlike an Instagram story you’ve previously liked
To unlike someone’s story on Instagram that you have previously liked, simply touch the heart icon in the reply bar again in order to unlike that particular story.
How to view likes on your own Instagram story
Private story likes show up as heart icons next to people’s handles in the viewer sheet for that story. Tap the people icon on your story screen to get to the viewer sheet. There will be a little heart icon from any follower who actually liked that particular story (image above).
As mentioned above, story likes are private. This means that you can only view likes that other people attach to your own stories. You are prohibited from viewing likes on other people’s stories.
Why does Instagram have the story likes feature?
Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the new feature in a video shared on Twitter, explaining, “The idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit.”
Before the change, any response to someone’s story, whether it was a simple emoji or a longer message, would wind up clogging up their DM inbox. As to why Instagram has rolled out private story likes, the goal is to let users show their appreciation for a story with a simple reaction that won’t end up in people’s DM inboxes.
❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️
Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.
Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022
What do you think of this feature?
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