Instagram has just announced improvements to Stories which will be coming to the Android and iOS apps soon. Instagram Stories, which have become increasing popular on the platform, replicate the ephemerality of Snapchat by having photos and videos expire automatically 24 hours after being uploaded.

With the app update that is currently rolling out, users will be able to upload multiple photos and videos to their Stories at a time. Now, when selecting gallery content to add to Stories, a user will see a new icon on the top right of the screen which will allow them to pick up to 10 photos and videos to upload all at once. As before, users can edit each one individually using things such as stickers or text, and then have the content uploaded to their Stories in the order they chose.

Instagram is also making it faster to add a location sticker to a Story by automatically suggesting relevant locations directly inside the sticker menu. Until now, adding a location sticker was a two-step process that involved opening up the sticker menu, tapping on the 'Location' sticker, and then picking the location you were looking for. The difference isn't life-changing, but it will certainly make location stickers that much easier to use.

In an unrelated piece of news, Instagram has now finally made it possible for users to download and export their uploaded content, including photos, videos, Stories, and images sent through direct message, as first spotted by TechCrunch. You can request to download all your data from the platform, and Instagram will send you an email with a download link once it's managed to gather everything in one place. The process can supposedly take up to 48 hours, but I found that a few minutes was all that was needed in my case. Currently, the tool only exists in Instagram's web app, but support for the Android and iOS apps is in the works.

Until now, there had never been any official way for a user to download their content, though some unofficial tools have existed. The change in policy comes in the wake of Facebook's recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, but is also one of the EU's GDPR data exportability requirements, which go into effect on May 25th. Unfortunately, there's still no way to download individual photos and videos — it's either all or nothing.

Source: Instagram, TechCrunch