Now You Can Finally Edit Comments on Instagram, but With a Time Limit.
It happens to everyone: you’re writing a comment on an Instagram post, hit “send,” and, oops, you realize you’ve made a glaring typo. What do you do? Delete the comment, retype it, and resend it, doubling the number of notifications the author will receive? Or do you leave it as is and hope others will forgive your silly mistake of “it’s” instead of “its”? Neither option is ideal, but they’re the only two options you have on Instagram, right?
No more restrictions: On Thursday, Instagram announced exciting news for frequent commenters : you can now edit your Instagram comments. Whether you regret a part of your comment or just need to correct a mistake, this new feature allows you to make adjustments without deleting the comment entirely, matching similar capabilities on other platforms.
Editing comments with restrictions.
Editing comments can be a slippery slope. If someone leaves a controversial comment but edits it after others have commented en masse, it only creates confusion for users who will be faced with the chaos after it’s posted. Perhaps this is why Instagram imposes some restrictions. First, you only have 15 minutes after posting a comment to edit it. This is how message editing works on platforms like Apple’s Messages app —you have a limited amount of time to change your comments before they are saved. Once this 15-minute period expires, your comment will be saved in its last edited form.
Furthermore, when you edit your comments, Instagram adds an “Edited” label to them, letting everyone know you’ve made some changes to the comment. Instagram doesn’t allow you to view your edit history, so no one will be able to see what you wrote before your last edit—unless, of course, someone took a screenshot of one of your previous versions. You can also only edit text comments, not images. If you post a comment with an image, you’ll need to delete the entire comment to remove the image.
How to edit comments on Instagram
After you leave a comment on an Instagram post, a new “ Edit” button will appear next to the “Repost” and “Share to Discussions” buttons. Click it, and your comment will reappear in the text field. Make any necessary changes, then click “Submit” again. Remember: you only have 15 minutes from the time you first commented to make changes.