We’re excited to share that our community now has 3 billion monthly active users. This milestone reflects how people everywhere connect, create, and share—from posting photos and Stories, to watching Reels, and staying in touch in DMs.
Much of Instagram’s growth is driven by the ways people come to our app to connect over short-form video and messaging. In fact, messaging has become the most popular way to share photos and videos on Instagram, and people reshare Reels over 4.5 billion times every day, across Meta platforms.
Testing a Reels-first experience in India
To make it even easier to access these most-loved parts of Instagram, we’re testing a new Reels-first experience for a limited group of users. This experience is similar to our recent launch the Reels-first experience on iPad:
- When you open Instagram, you’ll land directly in Reels. Stories remain at the top, making it easy to connect with friends.
- DMs are now just one swipe away in the navigation bar for quick access to conversations from anywhere in the app.
- There will also be a new “Following” tab, which gives you multiple ways to see the latest and greatest from the accounts you follow:
- All: Recommended posts and Reels from accounts you follow.
- Friends: Recommended posts and Reels from accounts you follow who also follow you back.
- Latest: Chronological posts and Reels from accounts you follow, with the newest content first.
We’re excited to test this experience in India because of the vast and culturally diverse Reels content created here, much of which our global community truly enjoys and connects over.
A new, simplified navigation
We’ll soon simplify the navigation experience on Instagram globally, so you can swipe easily between Reels and DMs:
- DMs will move to the center of the navigation bar for easier access, and Reels will be moved up to the second tab.
- You’ll be able to swipe between all tabs, making it seamless to move between your favorite spaces.
Instagram has always been about creativity and connection. We hope these tests and updates make it even easier for you to share, discover, and connect.
