Meta has introduced yet another new feature to Instagram. From now on, users will be able to “like” Stories – but the reactions won’t be landing into Inbox anymore.

There is now going to be a separate area for Story likes, and you and your followers won’t be cluttering up each other’s DMs any longer. Finally, right?

The Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, tweeted about the upcoming change yesterday. In a short video, he explained what the upcoming change is going to look like.

❤️ 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

From now on, when you view someone’s story, there will be a little heart icon nested between the message field and the little paper plane icon for sending it. When you tap that heart, a “like” will show up in the user’s viewer sheet instead of clogging up their DMs.

As Mosseri explains, this new feature has been introduced to clean up the DMs, considering that messaging has been one of Instagram’s key priorities. But at the same time, Story Likes are there to still enable people to show support to each other.

The feature has started rolling out, so you will see it on your Instagram over the next few days. I still don’t have it, but once I do – I sure hope my followers will use it. I’ve always wondered how come Instagram doesn’t work on a solution that will drive people away from your DMs when they just want to share an emoji reaction to a story, and I’m glad to see that it’s finally there.

[via The Verge]