Instagram spruced up its DM features on Monday. You can now share your live location with friends, handy for meetups at concerts or other crowded places. The social platform also now lets you add nicknames in one-on-one or group chats, and there are over 300 new stickers to share in DMs.
You can turn on the new location-sharing feature for up to one hour. It only displays to people in your private DMs (one-on-one or group), and locations can’t be forwarded to anyone outside the designated chat. The feature is off by default, and you’ll see a “You are sharing your location” indicator at the top of every message thread where you enable it. You can also stop sharing it manually anytime.
Nicknames let you add aliases for yourself or friends inside DMs. “Share an inside joke with a nickname, or simplify lengthy usernames so your friends are easier to recognize,” Instagram’s announcement blog post suggests.
The nicknames only appear in your DMs, not anywhere else on the platform. You can pick or swap out your nickname anytime and choose which friends in a chat have permission to change yours. To create a moniker, tap on the chat name at the top of your conversation, select “Nicknames” and choose the username you want to change.
Finally, Instagram added 17 new sticker packs for DMs, making over 300 new ones available. You can favorite the stickers you like, including those your friends share.
