Instagram launched a bunch of fresh features on August 6th, 2025, designed purely to help you vibe better with your squad. We all know Instagram is where we share our lives and spots, right? Well, get ready to level up your connection game with Reposts, the all-new Instagram Map, and the “Friends” tab in Reels. Staying in sync through the content you love just got way smoother.
Table of Contents
The Friends Tab in Reels
Let’s start with perhaps the most intriguing addition – the new “Friends” tab in Reels. This feature gives you a behind-the-scenes look at what content your friends are actually engaging with, not just what they’re posting themselves.
When you tap the “Friends” tab at the top of your Reels feed, you’ll see public content that people you follow have liked, commented on, or otherwise interacted with. You’ll also find recommendations from any Blends you’ve started together.
Seeing that your friend liked a cooking reel or commented on a travel post gives you natural conversation starters and helps you discover content through the lens of people whose taste you trust.
Instagram has been testing this feature throughout the year and is now rolling it out globally. They’ve also added privacy controls, so if you prefer to keep your activity more private, you can hide your likes and comments from appearing in others’ Friends tabs, or mute activity bubbles from specific people.
Reposts: A Native Way to Share Others’ Content
Instagram is also introducing a feature that users have been requesting for years – the ability to repost content directly within the app. No more screenshotting and cropping or using third-party apps.
When you see a public reel or feed post you want to share, simply tap the new repost icon. You can even add your own thoughts by typing into a thought bubble that appears on screen before saving your repost.
Reposts are properly credited to the original creator and appear in a separate tab on your profile, making it easy to revisit content you’ve shared. For creators, this presents a significant opportunity. When someone reposts their content, it can be recommended to that person’s followers – even if those followers don’t follow the original creator. This creates a natural discovery mechanism that could help creators reach entirely new audiences.
Your reposts will appear in your friends’ and followers’ feeds alongside regular recommendations, seamlessly integrating shared content into the Instagram experience.
The Instagram Map
Perhaps the most ambitious new feature is the Instagram Map, which combines location sharing with content discovery in a way that feels both useful and respectful of privacy.
The map serves two main purposes. First, if you choose to opt in, you can share your location with selected friends, giving them a lightweight way to see where you are. Second – and this works whether you share your location or not – you can explore location-based content from friends and creators.
How Location Sharing Actually Works
Instagram has been thoughtful about privacy here. Location sharing is completely opt-in – it’s off by default. If you decide to enable it, you have granular control over the experience. You can choose to share with all friends (followers you follow back), just Close Friends, only selected individuals, or no one at all. You can also exclude specific locations or people from your sharing.
Your location updates whenever you open the app or return to it after it’s been running in the background, but you can turn this off entirely at any time.
For parents, Instagram provides supervision controls. If your teen starts sharing their location, you’ll get a notification, and you can control whether they have access to location sharing at all. You can also see who they’re sharing their location with, enabling important safety conversations.
Content Discovery Through Location
Even if you never share your own location, the map offers a compelling way to discover content. You can see stories from friends who attended concerts, find new hangout spots through local creators’ reels, or simply explore what’s happening in interesting locations around you.
The map displays various types of location-tagged content, including reels, posts, and stories from people you follow (available for 24 hours after posting) and notes from people you mutually follow (also available for 24 hours).
You’ll find the Instagram Map at the top of your DM inbox. The feature is launching in the US today, with broader global availability coming soon.
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