On Valentine’s Day, Instagram announced that they’re rolling out private likes on Stories. 

Currently, when someone reacts to a Story on Instagram, the creator receives notification via direct messaging. The new feature allows users to like Stories without cluttering someone’s inbox.

When viewing a Story, you can now tap a heart icon, found at the bottom of the screen, between the message field and the paper airplane symbol. The author of the story can see likes, in the form of heart symbols, next to the user’s name on their Story views sheet. 

“The idea here is to make sure people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit,” says Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, in a recent post. 

Moving forward, Instagram wants the DM space to be more focused on conversations.