One Simple Function to Make Your Instagram Stories Private

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Friends are great, but not every friend is the same now that we’re in the age of social media. What if you run into a situation where you’re making posts that you don’t want everyone to see? On Facebook, you can change who will actually see your posts and stories, but that’s not the case with Instagram. At least until today.

Thanks to Instagram’s latest feature , you can change the settings to allow only your “close friends” interact with specific posts without involving others. Essentially, this allows you to make private Instagram stories. This is good news for many as you can make various posts without the risk of bosses, exes, or random people to actually see them.

In order to use this feature, all you have to do is make a list of friends that you consider are your “close friends.” It’s a bit of a call back to MySpace’s Top Eight, except you’re not flashing them around for the world to see. To access the list creator, all you need to do is go to your profile and click on the sidebar option that reads, “Close Friends.” Once you’re done adding friends, you’ll have the extra option to share the  story to close friends whenever you make a story. This can be done by confirming who you want to see the story once it’s created. To those close friends, private stories will be indicated by a green circle around your profile picture right where the stories are stored as usual. This works both ways.

Just like with any list, you are free to change the list at any time. Thankfully, other users can’t make requests to be added to those lists. This ensures that you have complete control over your list, not to mention it keeps people in the dark when figuring out if you have one of those lists or not.

When the feature was launched November 30, Instagram released a statement explaining why they are adding this feature in

Instagram Stories has become the place to express yourself and share everyday moments, but our community has grown and sometimes what you want to share isn’t for everyone. With Close Friends, you have the flexibility to share more personal moments with a smaller group that you choose.

This new update is a nice callback to Snapchat, which allowed users to choose who they were sending every post to. Currently, the feature doesn’t provide much flexibility as you can only make one list at a time. This means going through multiple steps if you want only specific people to see the story. That being said, it might not be far off for us to get that flexibility in the future with our stories.

 

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