This Instagram Stories guide answers the following questions: How do I use Instagram Stories? How do I create an Instagram Story? How do I view stories from others and navigate between stories or within a story? Can I save, delete, or post my story to my feed?
What is Instagram Stories?
If you’re new to the subject, Instagram Stories lets you put photos and short videos together to create a slideshow. You can also decorate your slideshow with sketches, emojis and text. The big difference to buy instagram story views, picture or video post is that your story is not displayed directly in the feed, but above, and only 24 hours visible on Instagram. After that your slideshow disappears again. (Meanwhile you can also define certain stories as highlights, so they are visible longer for your followers.)
This Instagram function is already well known from the App Snapchat. According to HEISE, Facebook and Instagram boss Mark Zuckerberg tried to buy Snapchat some time ago. But apparently you can’t buy everything with MUCH money (about 3 billion).
Since buying didn’t work, Facebook or Instagram simply released a Snapchat feature called Instagram Stories. I don’t want to show the differences between Snapchat and Instagram Stories now, because T3N has already listed the fine differences quite well. Much more, I’d like to give a short tutorial on how to use Instagram Stories.
Viewing and navigating Instagram Stories
Looking at Instagram Stories isn’t that hard at first. With the new App Update you can now find round circles with profile photos directly above your feed on the start page. Right at the front is always your story. Behind it you will find the stories of people you follow.
A colorful circle around the profile picture means there is something new to see in the person. If you click on the first circle, you can just sit back and watch TV and Instagram Stories. The stories run automatically one after the other.
You can tell that a new story starts from another person by the animation, which is like a spinning cube. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make a screenshot of it. But first you only get to see the newest of the person. If you want to see a section, I call it a shot, or skip a shot, you have to navigate.
Navigating in the Story
If you type all the way to the left, you’ll come back one story and you’ll come back one person when you’ve gone back all the stories from one person. That’s a big difference to Snapchat, where you can only go forward.
If you just tap a little further to the right somewhere in the picture, you’ll always come one story forward or then one person further. With a wipe, you jump one person forwards or backwards.
How many stories a person has published can be seen at the top of the thin line, which is more or less often dashed.
Create your story
If you want to create your own story, you can either wipe from left to right in your feed or tap the camera icon in the top left corner.
Tap the round circle to trigger
Tap and hold to take a photo, then tap and hold to take a video. Below the circle you can also choose other variations (just tap or wipe to the left). For example, a live video or a Bommerang video and with hands-free you film a video without having to press the circle all the time.
Tap the flash icon to turn on the flash
Use the two arrows to switch between front and rear camera. With the rightmost smiley icon you can activate face filters. You’ll find some really funny stuff there. Just try them out. You don’t have to press the release button.
A video may be by the way always only maximally 15 seconds long. If you don’t like your photo or video, you can delete it by tapping on the cross in the upper left corner. With Send to, you can add your recording to the back of your story. You can also send the video or picture to individual friends.
To record a new story, you must either tap the camera icon at the top left of your feed again or, if you’re watching your story, tap your profile picture with the little blue plus.
Edit and Creatively Decorate Your Story
But a simple picture or video would be too boring. Only by funny Emojis and texts it becomes really funny. The editing functions can be found in the upper right corner.
Smilies, sketches and text for Instagram Stories
You can use the smiley to add different smilies or elements. You can also call up the smiley palette with a wipe gesture from bottom to top. To delete a smiley, simply drag it to the trash can that appears when you hold down the smiley.
The pen is for scribbling around. You have 4 different ways to do this: a thin pen, a marker and a laser sword, and a chalk pen is hidden behind the heart. There is also an eraser.
You can add text by tapping on the two ace, Aa. Using the text tool you can also add emojis and smilies. By the way, you can move the text by dragging and dropping it or enlarge and rotate it with two fingers. You can also adjust the size using the vertical slider on the left. You can pick up a color with the eyedropper from the image for the pens as well as for the text tool. You can also click on an existing color or tap on the color points for a longer time and then select all colors in a color field.