5 Helpful Instagram Tips You Didn't Know About

By now, pretty much everyone knows how Instagram works—don’t worry, your grandma will be using it soon enough. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for the success of Instagram is its ease of use and simple user interface. There aren’t hundreds of hidden features and a bunch of messy ways to interact with people like on Facebook.

However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some cool things to do in Instagram that you may not know about. Here are five things you can do with everyone’s favorite photo-sharing network for you would-be power users out there:

1. Embed Photos on the Web

It took a while for Instagram to bring its social network to the web—and even longer for the ability to embed posts. But now, in the same way you can embed Tweets, you can also embed Instagram posts in blogs and articles.

You can’t do it from the mobile app, but if you’re viewing Instagram on a laptop or desktop, all you have to do is click that Ellipses button over on the bottom right and then click Embed. From there you’ll get a code that you can copy and paste wherever you want.

2. Remove Photos You’re Tagged In

Get tagged in an embarrassing photo from that Halloween party? Removing yourself from the photo so that it doesn’t appear in the “Photos of Me” part of your profile is much easier than it used to be.

All you have to do is tap on the photo, find your user name, and tap on it. From there, you’ll get a couple of options, but the one you want to tap is “Remove Tag”. This can be especially important if you keep getting tagged in those spammy marketing posts.

3. Send Photo Through Direct

In order to compete with apps like SnapChat, Instagram introduced a feature called Instagram Direct. It’s sort of a confusing mix between messaging and private photos, which is probably why it’s not used very often. However, it’s pretty simple to use.

After you’ve taken your nature photo, written up your witty caption, and found just the right filter for it, all you have to do is tap “Direct” instead of “Followers” in the final step. You can send it to just one person or you can start what is essentially a group message.

4. Post Gifs

Okay so this isn’t exactly an Instagram feature—it’s more of a workaround of Instagram’s video posting, but it’s still fun. In order to post a gif to Instagram, you’ll need to download an app like GifShare.

From there, you’ll be able to edit part of a video and turn it into a repeating gif that you can post directly to Instagram. In that app in particular, you can also choose from its library of reaction gifs and whatnot.

5. Add Hashtags to Your Photo After Posting

You probably know by now that if someone else comments on your photo using a hashtag, Instagram doesn’t categorize your post with that hashtag. However, if you comment on your own post with a hashtag, even well after you’ve posted, it will be picked up by that hashtag.

So if you’re one of those people who spams hashtags to get new followers and likes, you can easily do that to your old photos without have to annoy off all your friends.