Instagram enhances Story feature with stickers, holiday content, hands-free mode, and save story option

In a recent flurry of Instagram updates, the team announced even more new features coming out for Stories today. Rolling out now as a part of version 10.3, Instagram has added stickers, limited time holiday content, one-tap video recording, and a save story option.

The new features give Instagram users more ways to customize their experience and have fun sharing with others. It seems competition with Snapchat and others is motivating Instagram to bolster its features. First up, here’s a look at stickers and new text options:

After you’ve taken a photo or video, you’ll see a new stickers button next to the text and drawing tools. Tap the smiley face to find customizable stickers for weather, the current time and even your location. Adding a location sticker works the same as adding location to the posts you share to feed — simply choose or search for your location. People watching your story will be able to tap the sticker to learn more about the location, but your story won’t show up on the location page itself.

 

• Each contextual sticker has multiple styles to match your mood or taste.
• Tap the smiley-face at the top right of the camera screen to access stickers. To see different styles, tap the weather, time, or location stickers once you’ve added them to your photo.

Text updates: starting today, you can now add multiple text fields to any photo or video and choose left, center or right alignment for each text field. You can add as much text to your photo or video as you’d like — simply keep tapping the text button to add more.

Next, Instagram shared the holiday themed content which will be available for the next few weeks.

Candy cane brush and holiday stickers: for a limited time, a festive candy cane brush and a variety of holiday-themed stickers help make any moment more fun.

The last two features that will start rolling out today are a one-tap video feature called ‘Hands-Free’ and an option to save your last 24 hours worth of Stories.

A new ‘Hands-Free’ option in the format picker lets you start recording a video with just one tap. Whether you’re playing a guitar solo, building a snowman or perfecting your handstand, there’s no need to press and hold. Finally, on iOS, you can now save your entire story from the past 24 hours to your camera roll as a single video.

These new features don’t seem to be live for everyone who is on the current version, 10.3, but they should be rolling out soon. You can download Instagram from the App Store.

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