Instagram is rolling out a new feature designed to help users catch up on missed content from friends and family. The social network has begun testing a way to display unseen Story Highlights from mutual followers at the end of the Stories tray. The Stories tray appears at the top of your Instagram feed, showing Stories from the people you follow.
The feature is part of Instagram’s ongoing efforts to improve connections within the Stories section. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, explained that the feature is being tested with a small group of users to gather feedback. Social media expert Ahmed Ghanem was the first to spot the test.
As Instagram becomes increasingly saturated with content like Reels and sponsored posts, it can be easy to overlook updates from the people you follow. To address this, Instagram’s new feature aims to ensure that users don’t miss out on original content, particularly Story Highlights, which are curated Stories saved by users to their profiles. This functionality brings the Stories tray one step closer to showing only content that matters most, without overcrowding it.
According to Meta, the test feature will allow users to view unseen Story Highlights from the past week. These Highlights will be shown only after all current Stories in the tray have been viewed. This means that if you follow numerous accounts and rarely scroll all the way to the end of your Stories tray, you may still miss seeing certain Highlights.
Importantly, the feature is focused on Story Highlights, which are permanent Stories that users save to their profile, not the standard Stories that disappear after 24 hours. This means that the feature will not display regular Stories, but only curated content that users want to keep visible for a longer period.
