Instagram Stories and Direct Gets Selfie Stickers, Custom Geostickers, and More

Instagram has announced a new update for its Instagram Stories and Instagram Direct bringing in more stickers and editing options. The big highlight among them is the ability to make your own selfie a sticker, and pinning them in videos if you wish to. Other features include custom geostickers or new cities, and a separate favourite tab for stickers for easy searchability.

These updates are available as part of Instagram version 10.16 for iOS in the App Store and version 10.16.1 for Android in Google Play. The selfie sticker feature lets you make your own selfie into a sticker for pinning on your photos. "When you take a photo or video and tap the smiley face, you'll see a new sticker with a camera icon that lets you capture a mini-selfie. Before or after capturing, tap to apply different frame styles: fade or circle. Put your selfie sticker anywhere, adjust the size and use as many other creative tools as you want," Instagram notes in its blog.

You can also use these selfie stickers in videos, by just tapping and holding the sticker, moving it over any object and confirming by tapping Pin. This pinning feature works in videos, Boomerang, and hands-free videos as well. You can pin a selfie, a normal sticker, or even text in a video, and even opt for all if you wish to.

Just like Snapchat, Instagram Stories is also now giving more users the option of custom geostickers, which means city-specific features will show up in-app by detecting your location. This feature is has now been made available for Chicago, London, and Madrid users.

There's also now a place where all your favourite stickers will get stored in the app. Tap the smiley face, just swipe right to view all recently-used stickers. Lastly, hands-free mode gets a timer to let you know when the video will begin, and you can use it by tapping and holding the shutter button.

Apart from this update, Instagram also announced that it now enjoys 200 million daily active users, surpassing Snapchat for the first time. Snapchat, in comparison, has 161 million DAUs. Instagram managed to add 50 million DAUs in just three months, as in January it was reported to have 150 million DAUs.