Instagram Buzzwords

Find the Activity screen by tapping the heart at the bottom of your Newsfeed screen. Activity alerts you when you have a new follower and shows you when someone comments on one of your photos/ videos and when someone mentions you in a comment. You can also see what photos and videos people you follow have liked or commented on.

You can archive a post you’ve shared to hide it from your profile and make it so your followers and other people on Instagram can’t see it. When you archive a post, it keeps all its likes and comments. Once you’ve archived a post, you can choose to show it on your profile again. The post will return to its original spot on your profile.

Boomerang takes a burst of photos and stitches them together into a high-quality mini video that plays forward and backward. You can create a Boomerang in your Story or by downloading the separate ‘Boomerang‘ app.

Hashtag and location pages include public photos and videos that were shared with the corresponding hashtag or location. You can tap on the top of these pages to see public stories and scroll down to see public posts.

You can also follow community hashtags. For example, if your favourite breed of dog is a Yorkshire Terrier, you can follow #YorkshireTerrier and pictures with this hashtag will appear in your newsfeed.

Instagram Direct lets you send messages to one or more people. You can send the following things as a message on Instagram Direct: Photos or Videos you take or upload from your library, posts you see in your Newsfeed, Disappearing photos and videos, Profiles, Text, Hashtags and Locations.

To see the messages you’ve sent with Instagram Direct, tap the ‘paper aeroplane’ in the top-right corner of Feed. From there you can manage the messages you’ve sent and received.

When you send a post from your newsfeed using Instagram Direct, it’ll only be visible to people who can already see it. For example, if you send a post from a private account as a message, only people who follow that account will be able to see it. Photos or videos sent with Instagram Direct can’t be shared through Instagram to other sites like Facebook or Twitter and won’t appear on hashtag and location pages.

You can add a filter to photographs you upload to Instagram, this will change the colour and appearance of the image.

Home shows a newsfeed of photos posted by you and your friends. You can like and comment on photos in your newsfeed.

If a photo or video has a Hashtag in the description, you will be able to tap the Hashtag to view other photos and videos which have the same Hashtag attached. This page shows hashtags by anyone in the world who uses Instagram. If your account is set to private, only people that you allow to follow you will be able to see your posts with the Hashtag.

Story highlights allow you to group your stories together. For example, if you visit a different country on holiday and take a number of stories you can have them all together under your Instagram bio for users to watch.

Instagram’s way to take time lapse videos. You can create a Hyperlapse in your Story or by downloading the separate ‘Hyperlapse‘ app.

Instagram lets you broadcast videos to your followers live, sending them a notification to watch your live broadcast as it happens. Once your live stream has ended, it completely disappears. The only way you can save this live video is if you use another device to do so. For more information on this topic, read the ‘Live Streaming‘ section of this app.

Mentions are like ‘tagging’ on Facebook or Twitter. Tagging is where you use the @ symbol and include your follower’s username e.g. @saferschoolsni. When you mention @saferschoolsni, that person will receive a notification to let them know you have included them in a photo description or comment. If you block a user on Instagram, they can mention your username on Instagram, but you will not be notified about this and it won’t appear in your activity.

To see photos other people have tagged you in, go to your profile and tap the icon (left). You can choose to add these photos manually or automatically to your profile. When other people tag you in photos, these photos may show up on your profile. Who can see these photos on your profile depends on your visibility settings. You can hide photos you’re tagged in from your profile or remove the tag if you don’t want anyone to see them. You can also choose to manually approve photos you’re tagged in before they appear on your profile.

Your Instagram profile provides a description of you and shows all the photos and videos you have uploaded.

You can create collections to organise the posts you save and you can also create a new collection as you save posts. To see the collections you’ve created, go to your profile and tap the ‘Ribbon’ icon, then tap Collections at the top.

Similar to TikTok, Reels is a feature on Instagram that lets you create fun portrait style videos to share with your friends on Instagram.