See Without Being Seen: Instagram’s Stealthy New Feature

Instagram has been slowly building its DM features, and currently the communication experience you get on the platform is quite versatile and comprehensive. But at the end of the day, it still lacks a number of features, such as the ability to enable read receipts, that other dedicated messaging apps like Meta’s own WhatsApp have.

This will soon change as Instagram gets a new feature to turn off read receipts like WhatsApp. Announcing the same on his Instagram channel, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that this feature is currently under testing and will be coming to the platform. “If you’re someone who tends to leave people unread, your time has come. We’re experimenting with disabling read receipts for Instagram DMs,” Zuckerberg said on his channel.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri also shared screenshots of how this feature would work on Instagram. When you turn off “read receipts”, Instagram will not notify the other person that you have “seen” their message. This can be handy for someone who occasionally forgets to reply to people who see their messages. However, if you turn off the read receipt feature and use Vanish mode, the other party can see if you’ve seen their posts on Instagram.

We don’t know when this feature will be fully rolled out, but since Zuckerberg has said that this feature will be released and tested soon, we expect it shouldn’t be long before you can start leaving people reading without them knowing. .

In related news, Instagram is adding the ability to add song lyrics to Instagram Reels, just like stories. Now when editing your reel, you can tap the music icon to add a song and then swipe left to add lyrics to your reel.

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