Instagram Launches ‘Private Story Likes,’ Allows Users to React to People’s Stories Without it Creating a DM

Instagram has announced a new feature that allows users to give Instagram Stories “likes.”

No more taking it to the DM when you want to react to an Instagram Story; now you can just simply like someone’s Story post without it creating a message-like response in your DMs.

“So now, as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon,” said Instagram head Adam Mosseri, The Verge reports. “And if you tap on it, it’ll send the author of that story a like, and that like will show up in the viewer sheet, not in your DM thread with them.”

As far as likes on a Story post go, you won’t be able to see a public count, but you can see who liked your post in your Story’s view sheet. “The idea here is make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit,” Mosseri said.