Instagram Introduces Instants, Meta’s New Private Photo Sharing App

Instagram has a new app called Instants that lets you share unedited photos with your closest friends that’ll disappear once viewed. Sound familiar?

Meta announced Instants on Wednesday, an Instagram-integrated tool that lets you photo dump to your mutual followers and friends. Instants won’t let you edit the photos you send, but you can add captions if you’d like. 

If this feature sounds familiar, it’s because you can already send private disappearing photos through apps like Snapchat and BeReal. Similar to those apps, photos sent through Instants will vanish after 24 hours. The app also has an undo button in case you second-guess sharing a pic.

To use Instants, all you need to do is open your Instagram inbox. You’ll see what appears to be a stack of photos in the bottom-right corner of your screen. From there, choose who you want to send images to — close friends or followers you follow back — and tap the white button below the camera to share. Instants will appear as the same stack of photos in the bottom-right corner of their inboxes and will disappear after being viewed.

You’ve probably got a bunch of questions — so do we. First and foremost, you won’t be able to take screenshots of Instants you receive. If you’re the one who sends them, they’ll be saved to a private folder only you can access; you’ll be able to repost them to Stories if you choose.

That said, privacy concerns abound with this new feature. Instagram says you cannot take a screenshot of a photo sent through Instants, but what’s to stop someone from using another device to take a picture of it before it disappears? People have access to plenty of screen-recording tools out there that can help keep receipts — even when they have a limited shelf life.

It goes without saying that people will undoubtedly use Instants to send revealing photos to others. Instagram’s community standards, safety measures and parental controls will apply here, and they’ll certainly be tested by this new tool. Meta stopped end-to-end encryption for Instagram DMs last week, so photo-dump at your own discretion.

An Instagram spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.

Instagram is also currently trialing paid subscriptions that offer features otherwise not available, like seeing who has watched your story multiple times, creating unlimited lists beyond just “close friends,” spotlighting one story per week so more people see it, making a super heart reaction for stories, extending your stories for another 24 hours and previewing stories without showing up as a viewer. The features are being tested across several countries at a price point of around $1 to $2.