How to Share a Friend’s Story on Instagram in Your Own Way
When you are tagged in someone’s Instagram Story, you always get an Instagram notification informing you of this. This week, the app added another way to interact with this mention: you can share it in your own story .
This is not something you probably want to do a lot, but the idea is that if you are out with friends and someone shares a cool video of you doing karaoke, or a group selfie you would like to take instead of this, you can add it to your story just like you yourself took this epic shot.
The way it works is pretty simple: when you are mentioned in an Instagram story, you get a notification, just like you always do. There will be a button above to add this mention to your own story. When you click on it, your friend’s message will appear in the story editor, where you can shrink or enlarge it and add additional tags or GIFs, as if it were content that you were adding from your camera. To share something in your story, you must be tagged in the original.
When you republish it, the original poster title will appear as a small icon, and people who see the image through your Instagram Story can click on the original poster’s handle to go to their profile.
One caveat: for you to share the story, the original poster must have a public account. This means that even if they are your friends and you can see the message, you will not be able to share messages with people who could not see the original.
If you hate this idea, there is a way to turn it off. When you launch your Instagram Story, tap the three dots in the lower-right corner of the page labeled “More” and then select “Story Settings” from the pop-up window.
From there, you’ll be taken to a page where you can customize who can reply to your stories, as well as turn off the ability to share photos and videos from your stories, which is a good option if you want to keep control of everything.
This feature also requires Instagram version 48, which was released today on the App Store and Google Play. If you’ve been featured in a story and don’t see an option to share it with others, try updating the app.