Latest news with #newfeatures
CNET
12-08-2025
- CNET
Instagram Adds New Features, Including Reposts and Maps
Instagram has launched new features aimed at further connecting users with their online contacts, the company announced Wednesday. One involves sharing public feed posts and reels, another shares locations with others on an Instagram map, and a new Friends tab shows what content your contacts have liked or commented on. For reposts, you'll be able to share public reels and feed posts from other users. The original poster will be credited and those reshares will appear in the sharer's profile in a new tab. Posts and reels will now include a reshare icon when they're available to share. Instagram says creators will be able to reach more people since those posts will be recommended to others' followers. You have to enable the new map feature to start sharing your last active location. You can set who can see your location and can also choose not to share your location when you're in specific places, or have your location available to specific users. Location sharing can be disabled at any time, Instagram says. Reels, posts and stories can be viewed through the map. Also, a new Friends tab at the top of Reels shows public content from contacts. This feature has been available previously, but is now being expanded globally. You can opt out of having your content displayed in the tab with options to hide likes, comments and reposts. You can also mute likes, comments and reposts from accounts you follow.
Yahoo
07-08-2025
- Yahoo
Instagram debuts new features including map, reposts and Friends tab
Instagram has rolled out a new slate of new features it says will help users better connect with friends, from reposts to updating locations and more. Below, find out what you should know about the new Instagram features, how to use them, and what to do if you're concerned about privacy. What are the new Instagram features? Meta, Instagram's parent company, announced several new updates to the popular photo and video sharing app on Thursday including reposts, a new "Friends" tab and maps to connect further with friends through content. Repost Reels and posts Users can now repost Reels from public profiles and in-feed posts to share with their own followers. The reposted content, which is credited to the original poster, will go to friends' and followers' feeds and appear in a separate profile tab to make it easier to look back at the content you've reposted. New Instagram map to share location Users can "choose to responsibly share your location with friends you pick" using the new Instagram map, Meta said Thursday. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, shared an update on his account with a more detailed explanation, clarifying the opt-in nature of the new map feature. "Your location will only be shared *if* you decide to share it, and if you do, it can only shared with a limited group of people you choose," he wrote in the caption of a post. "To start, location sharing is *completely off.*" For those who decide to share location, Mosseri said the three audience-sharing options are "(1) a custom list you make, (2) your Close Friends list, or (3) or followers you follow back." When users share locations in their stories, they will show up on the location map for 24 hours. Mosseri added that "as always with Stories, this only shows the place you tagged to your followers -- it does not share your real-time or live location." Additionally, Meta said Thursday that parents with Instagram supervision set up for their teens "have control over their location sharing experience on the map." "You will receive a notification if your teen starts sharing their location, giving you the opportunity to have important conversations about how to safely share with friends," the company said. "You can decide whether your teen has access to location sharing on the map and see who your teen is sharing their location with." Friends tab in Reels The third new Instagram feature Meta announced Thursday is the so-called "Friends" tab in Reels, which the company said will allow users to see "public content your friends have interacted with, or recommendations from Blends you've started, and easily start conversations about them." The new feature, which Meta said began rolling out "earlier this year" before launching globally, can be found at the top of the Reels tab. "We're also rolling out controls for what's shown in the Friends tab, including the ability to hide your own likes and comments on reels, and to mute activity bubbles from specific people you follow," the company said. To edit or opt out of the Friends Reels activity feature, users can go to their "Settings and activity" page, scroll down to "Activity in Friends tab" and select the audience with whom they wish to share their Reels activity, which includes an option to share the activity with "no one." ABC News' Melanie Schmitz contributed to this report.
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Yahoo
Instagram's plan to be more social: maps, reposts, and seeing more of what your friends like
Instagram just rolled out new features aimed at making the app more social. The Meta-owned app is adding a map to see friends' locations and introducing reposts. Instagram's top exec, Adam Mosseri, said he doesn't want Instagram to just be entertainment. Instagram wants to be more … social. The Meta-owned platform announced on Wednesday that it is rolling out three new features in an effort to help its users better connect with their friends. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri said in a video posted to the app on Wednesday that the company wants "Instagram to be not just a lean-back experience that is just fun and entertaining, but also a participatory one." One of Instagram's new features aimed at helping people connect with their friends is a map where you can share your location. The map will show where you were last active on Instagram. And yes, that does sound a lot like Snapchat's Snap Map (and it wouldn't be the first time Instagram's ripped a page out of Snapchat's playbook). The new map feature will be accessible in Instagram's direct messaging (DM) inbox. The company has dramatically expanded its DM features in the past year or so, where the bulk of the app's social interactions actually occur. Sharing locations with friends and family has become commonplace for young people — especially Gen Z — with apps like Apple's Find My Friends being a go-to for the generation. Meanwhile, new startups are also trying to tap into the social mapping craze, such as Bump, a French app from Amo, which was founded by the former Zenly team (a social mapping startup that was acquired by Snapchat in 2017). Don't fret if sharing your location on Instagram makes you want to run for the hills. You have to opt in to sharing your location with people, and you can choose who you share that location with (such as only followers you follow back, your "Close Friends" list, or a select few). Parents also have control over location sharing for teen accounts, Instagram said in a blog post. Instagram's map is available in the US and a handful of global markets starting Wednesday. Reposts are finally here Instagram announced two other features on Wednesday: reposts of reels and feed posts, and a global expansion of its "Friends" tab. Mosseri said in the same video that reposts have been a "request for many years," adding that the reason Instagram is finally introducing reposts is that the feed itself is already comprised of recommended content from accounts people don't follow. Instagram joins rival TikTok, which introduced a repost feature back in 2022. Instagram is also expanding the "Friends" tab for reels, which will now show reels that friends have either commented on, liked, reposted, or posted themselves. Users will be able to start conversations with their friends using the "reply bar," which triggers a DM. Instagram introduced more privacy tools for its friends tab as well, including the ability to opt out by hiding your likes, comments, and reposts from friends, or muting that content from people you follow. The friends feed has already been rolled out in the US, and is now expanding globally. Mosseri said this feature is "a way to explore your interests and your friends' interests" and also "get to know a little bit more about" those friends. In addition to Instagram being entertaining, Mosseri said he wants the platform to be somewhere users "actually engage with and connect with the people that you care about." Just a few months ago, whether Instagram was more of an entertainment platform rather than a social network was front and center at Meta's antitrust trial brought by the Federal Trade Commission. One slide from Meta's opening statement at the trial revealed that just 7% of the time spent on Instagram in 2025 was spent viewing content from friends. Perhaps Instagram wants to turn that around. Read the original article on Business Insider
CNET
06-08-2025
- CNET
Instagram Adds New Features Including Reposts and Maps
Instagram has launched new features aimed at further connecting users with their online contacts. One involves sharing public feed posts and reels, another shares locations with others on an Instagram map, and a new Friends tab shows what content a user's contacts have liked or commented on. For reposts, users will be able to share public reels and feed posts from other users. The original poster will be credited and those reshares will appear in the sharer's profile in a new tab. Posts and reels will now include a reshare icon when they're available to share. Instagram says creators will be able to reach more people since those posts will be recommended to others' followers. Users must enable the new map feature to start sharing their last active location. They can set who can see their location and can also choose not to share their location when they're in specific places, or have their location available to specific users. Location sharing can be disabled at any time, Instagram says. Reels, posts and stories can be viewed through the map. Also, a new Friends tab at the top of Reels shows public content from contacts. This feature has been available previously, but is now being expanded globally. Users can opt out of having their content displayed in the tab with options to hide likes, comments and reposts. They can also mute likes, comments and reposts from accounts they follow.
Android Authority
27-07-2025
- Android Authority
9 signs its time to upgrade to a new phone
Tushar Mehta / Android Authority The question 'Should I buy a new phone?' holds more weight than we imagine. For most of us, phones are our trusted associates, and parting with them isn't easy. For others, the upgrade to a new phone may be too insignificant to warrant the expense. Regardless of the emotional value your phone holds, getting a new one every few years can be a cathartic experience. Besides addressing some of the issues of your older phone, a new Android phone will bring a variety of new features. While a new phone may not hold the answer to all your life problems, it may end some of the trivial ones. Here are the signs that indicate it might be time to upgrade to a new one. How long do you use your phone before upgrading to a new one? 0 votes I upgrade with every new generation NaN % I get a new phone every two years or so NaN % At least five years NaN % Five to seven years, if not more NaN % Until my old phone dies NaN % 1. Your phone heats excessively Robert Triggs / Android Authority One of the first tell-tale signs that your phone is in dire need to be replaced is when it gets unreasonably hot. Heating, as a sign of your phone's old age, becomes even more pertinent when it happens excessively, even during basic activities such as calling or without any apparent load — as while gaming or fast charging. This usually indicates that your phone's hardware may be old enough and feeling choked with the requirements of newer apps or a modern operating system. 2. It lags while responding to touch Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority While you feel the phone heat up unjustifiably, you might even witness it lag in daily operations. This happens because most silicon-based semiconductors are only designed to operate within a specific temperature range. When chips heat beyond a certain point, the algorithms coded onto the board limit performance to reduce the heat, and this phenomenon is known as 'throttling.' In practical usage, throttling manifests as a jittery response when content on the screen refreshes or when you interact with the screen. Alternatively, a laggy screen could also suggest a physical problem with the screen itself. A new screen could be a stopgap solution — only if you're lucky enough to find a replacement screen for an old phone. 3. The phone randomly freezes or reboots Damien Wilde / Android Authority Aging phones are often characterized by random instances of the screen becoming unresponsive, which is likely an extension of the previous point I mentioned. When that happens, the phone might resort to restarting itself — or require you to restart it. But either condition points to hardware problems that would not emerge on new devices — except in rare cases like that of the Sony Xperia 1 VII, and is a prominent sign that you should consider ditching the old phone. Sometimes, random reboots can also signal a software issue with the phone, which may be easier to resolve. That is why it's a good idea to look for other signs that suggest it's time for a new phone. 4. Its battery has degraded significantly Tushar Mehta / Android Authority It's an established fact that lithium-ion batteries, which are also present inside our phones, degrade over time. Each charging cycle reduces the battery's ability to hold electric charge. In simpler terms, we refer to this loss of ability as a reduction in battery capacity. While Android phones get relatively less flak than iPhones for degrading batteries, they're not entirely immune to such changes. If you tend to use the same phone for several years, you will have likely noticed the battery health decline beyond a certain level — as on my iPhone 11 above. A degraded battery naturally lasts shorter than when it, and the phone, were new. While iOS already offers easy visibility to battery health stats, Google has started adding similar information to newer Pixel devices, starting Pixel 9 series, running Android 16. You can use this information to decide if you might need to upgrade to a new phone. 5. It takes ages to charge Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority The Google Pixel 9 does not show the "charging rapidly" text on the lock screen even though the charger is delivering ~11.5W of power. While there are several reasons why your phone may be charging slowly, a weathered battery is definitely one of them. If you have experienced your phone's charging speed slow down over time, it's easy to attribute it to its age, especially if the decline is gradual. In such a case, you might want to bless your old phone with a new battery — if buying a new phone isn't an option. However, if your device is old, physically battered, and shows a few of the other signs listed here, you should just upgrade to a new phone. 6. The phone brand limits your phone's performance on purpose Tushar Mehta / Android Authority If you've followed the world of smartphones for a while, 'batterygate' would ring a bell. If you haven't, this was the title given to a fiasco resulting from Apple's purposeful slowing down of the performance of iPhone 6 and 6s phones to reduce the impact of their aging batteries. The uproar led to Apple offering a $50 payout to impacted consumers in the US and making this throttling optional. While Apple's actions were widely criticized, they had a vital purpose of preventing fires or sparking issues while charging those devices. In some instances, as with the more recent Pixel 6a, the company may issue an update to limit the battery's capacity in response to a manufacturing defect. In a rare occasion like that, you would likely be eligible for compensation or a discount voucher — as you are in the case of the Pixel 6a (check here) — and you could use those benefits to treat yourself to a new phone instead of taking your chances trying to resuscitate the older one. 7. It no longer receives updates Robert Triggs / Android Authority Our phones have limited lifespans, which are often defined by the software support promised for these devices. Most Android phone manufacturers offer two to three years of Android updates, along with some additional years of security updates. If you have a recent Samsung or Google phone, you'll enjoy up to seven years of updates. But what happens when your phone stops receiving updates? It may be less bothersome when your phone stops receiving Android updates, and the worst that could happen is that you're stuck with an older appearance and some outdated features on your phone. However, it's more concerning when your phone stops receiving security updates, making it an easier target for sophisticated cyberattacks than phones that still receive those updates. While it's not the end of the world, you should consider getting a new phone if your current one stops getting updates, and safeguard yourself against online attacks. 8. The screen has an unusual tint Tushar Mehta / Android Authority One of the first signs of aging my trusty old OnePlus 3T showed me was an unusual pink hue take over the entire screen. I hadn't dropped the phone and could easily overrule physical damage to the screen. Being over five years old at that point, I didn't bother changing the screen, though I held onto it for its sentimental value. I just switched to a new phone. More recently, the screen has turned fully opaque, signalling its death, convincing me I was right to replace the phone at the right moment. And that is what I would recommend anyone to do if the screen on their old phone stops showing its actual colors. 9. Your phone struggles with cellular or Wi-Fi reception Joe Maring / Android Authority Solid cellular and internet connectivity are fundamental requirements for a phone. However, as networks continue to upgrade, radios on older phones may not be compatible. This is especially true if there has been a significant leap in network technology since you first owned a phone. For instance, if your current phone does not support 5G or is limited to the 2.4GHz Wi-Fi band, that's a good reason to upgrade to more recent hardware. We expect the next generation of 5G, known as 5G Advanced, to arrive soon and foresee tri-band Wi-Fi becoming commonplace. When either of those happens, older devices from the early era of 5G or dual-band Wi-Fi may not suffice, prompting you to upgrade to a new phone. Do you have any other indicators to help you determine when the right time to upgrade to a new phone is? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
