You can now follow hashtags on Instagram, not just people
If you find yourself constantly looking #Android on Instagram, you can now follow that hashtag, so you’re always kept up to date.
We follow all sorts of accounts on Instagram, whether it’s a celebrity, a cute cat, or Android Authority. With the latest update, however, you can now follow hashtags. As the company explains, following a hashtag is just like a following a friend: search a topic that you’re into or tap any hashtag you see, and on top of the results page, you will see a follow button. If you follow #Android, you’ll see relevant posts from that hashtag in your feed and your stories bar. You will be able to unfollow your hashtags the same way.
Just like how you can see which accounts your friends follow, you will be able to see all the hashtags that they follow as well, but Instagram reassures us that you can change your privacy settings to make sure only your followers are able to see those lists.
This new feature is rolling out to the Android app, so head to the Play Store link below to download or update your Instagram app!
Recent updates
Save and highlight your favorite Stories
December 5, 2017: The latest update allows all users to not only save their favorite Stories, but to show them to anyone else who checks out their account. Previously, it was hard to save your Stories past 24 hours, but now Instagram will automatically archive all of your Stories by default. To see any of your saved Stories, you can just tap on the Archive icon on your profile, and you should see a new Stories archive alongside your Posts archive, with the most recent stories placed at the bottom of the grid.
Broadcast live videos with friends
October 24, 2017: With this update, , Instagram is now allowing all users to broadcast live videos with friends. When one of your followers is going live with a friend, you’ll now see two circles stacked together in your Stories bar.
Cross-post Stories to Facebook
October 6, 2017: Instagram Stories are quite popular, while those on Facebook haven’t quite caught on yet. In hopes of changing that, Facebook now allows you to cross-post your Instagram Stories to the biggest social network in the world. Unfortunately, while you can now post your Instagram Stories to Facebook, you can’t do it the other way around, although this feature might be enabled somewhere down the line.
Face filters for live video streams
September 22, 2017: You can now add face filters to your live videos, which you can share as a replay to stories once they’ve ended. Users can now add face filters to their live videos simply by tapping the face icon in the bottom right corner before or during their broadcast. You can change the selected filter during your live streaming session, and once you’re done, you still have the option to either discard it or share it as a replay to your stories.
Instagram now plays all video audio once you turn sound on
September 18, 2017: Instagram is making some minor changes to how you interact with videos on its app. As you know, when you open Instagram, the videos posted by those you follow play automatically with the audio turned off. However, when you tap on the speaker icon to hear the sound, all the other videos in your feed will now have the audio turned on for the rest of your session. So if you close the app and then open it again, the sound will be turned off.
Share people’s stories as Direct messages
This update added the option of sharing any Instagram story in Direct messages. There’s a direct icon in the bottom right corner of each story, which you can tap to select the people to whom you want to send it to. Of course, when the story disappears from the app, the recipient will no longer be able to view it.
In case you don’t want people to look at your stories and be able to share them, just head into the stories settings and disable the option. It’s also worth noting that if you have a private account, only your followers will get to view a story that’s been shared via Direct.
Instagram now lets you post multiple photos and videos as non-squares
August 29, 2017: With the latest Instagram update, users can choose landscape and portrait formats when sharing multiple photos and videos. As Instagram explains, the option to choose gives users more “creative flexibility” but unfortunately, “to keep the experience smooth and consistent… all photos and videos in your post must be shared in the same format.”
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