How to Disable Instagram's New Activity Status Feature

Adopt your Instagram addiction to be kept under wraps rather than revealed to people? You'll need to take action.

Instagram has a potentially embarrassing new feature that shows people the last time you lot used the app. The new activity status feature, which is enabled past default and shows upward inside the Straight Messages department of the app, arrived every bit part of Instagram's latest update for iOS and Android, according to The Next Web.

To see what nosotros mean, head over to your Straight Messages by clicking the paper aeroplane icon at the top right corner of your feed. Underneath each person's username will be a line showing the final time they were active. Information technology might even show that users are "Active now."

In other words, you tin can now snoop on the Instagram activeness of anyone with whom yous have ever Direct Messaged – and they tin easily see when you last used the app, besides. That is, unless you disable the feature, which nosotros doubtable a lot of you will want to do.

To disable information technology, visit your contour and click the gear icon to open the Settings menu. Then, merely scroll down until you lot come across "Show Activeness Status" and toggle this option off. When you disable this feature, people will no longer exist able to run into your activity status – phew! – but you won't be able to see anyone else's, either.

Nosotros can imagine scenarios where this feature might get people in trouble or crusade difficult feelings: If someone DMs you lot, for instance, and you lot don't respond correct away, but they can see yous're using the app, they might jump to the decision that you don't desire to talk to them.

Meanwhile, Instagram is currently testing a characteristic that will snitch on yous if you snap a screenshot of someone'southward Story, WABetaInfo reported this week. The first fourth dimension you accept a screenshot while watching a Story, y'all'll get a pass: Instagram will send you a notification, warning that "the next time you have a screenshot of a Story, the person who posted information technology will be notified."

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Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's expert on fitness and smart dwelling house products. Teaching yoga for almost 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected wellness products including fitness trackers, eye rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, force preparation machines, treadmills, and more. Angela too tests smart dwelling house devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, but to name a few.