Instagram Tests Vertical Scrolling Design for Stories

Instagram announced that it was preparing a new vertical design for stories almost a year ago. Now, this update is available for some countries. First, the vertical scrolling of the stories appeared in Turkey. Some people reported that they were able to scroll to other users’ stories by swiping down. A little later, journalist Thássius Veloso, who lives in Brazil, wrote about the same feature in his country. It means that Instagram offers a beta version for several countries, but it doesn’t report when the official version will be available for all users. 

When you want to go to another user’s story, you can still tap on the screen left or right in the beta version of this update. Vertical scrolling comes into play when you go to other users’ stories. It may seem a little inconvenient, but the reason for this new feature can be the competition with TikTok. The most popular video app nowadays already has vertical scrolling for videos. Instagram also started offering diverse features for video content in stories now. 

At the end of the year, the maximum limit for videos in stories changed from 15 seconds to 1 minute. However, the video will still be cut into four stories 15 seconds each. This function is quite convenient for those bloggers who post long stories frequently. Also, when you’re looking for the videos in search, they have a more similar design to the TikTok one. Some users say that all these updates are unnecessary and the previous interface was more user-friendly. On the other hand, some people enjoy these changes and wait for the new upgrades, so it’s difficult to say what is better.

Do you often use Instagram? Do you think the vertical scrolling for stories will be convenient or not? You can leave your comments in the section below any time you want.