Instagram introduces private Story likes

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

❤️ 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

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.