You can now skip ahead in Reels by holding down on either edge of the screen, which plays the video at double speed. Reels started out with a 15-second cap but can now run for up to three minutes, so playback controls make sense.
TikTok thought the same thing when it added a fast-forward feature, which you enable by... holding down on either edge of the screen. What a coincidence!
The company is getting rid of a feature it introduced less than a year ago that gave users the ability to leave semiprivate and disappearing comments on grid posts and Reels. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said the feature wasn’t widely adopted, and that the platform has become “too complicated” over the years.
During his weekly AMA, Instagram head Adam Mosseri acknowledged that “we really should build” a small-but-important feature that competitors like TikTok and YouTube offer: picture-in-picture (PIP). Maybe you’ll be able to multitask and watch reels soon.
Also, Instagram is working to improve its search feature this year — including the ability to search for content, not just other accounts.
