Instagram Rolls Out Hidden Valentine’s Day Features: How to Use Them

Instagram has added a Valentine’s Day feature to Stories where a special pink @mention triggers floating hearts.

Written by Akash Dutta, Edited by David Delima | Updated: 14 February 2024 21:02 IST

Instagram Rolls Out Hidden Valentine’s Day Features: How to Use Them

Photo Credit: Unsplash/Souvik Banerjee

These Valentine’s Day features on Instagram may take some time to reach all users

Highlights

Instagram has added two hidden features for Valentine’s Day
Posting a Valentine’s Day related Note displays floating hearts
Tapping on Notes with similar keywords also results in large hearts

Instagram has added new features to add some flair to your Valentine's Day celebrations. There are two new features that have been rolled out by the Meta-owned social media platform, but they are not very easy to discover. These hidden features can only be triggered with specific actions inside the Android or iOS app. One of the features can be found in the Notes section on the direct messages (DM) page. The second hidden feature has been added to Instagram Stories.

The first feature is a floating or exploding hearts animation, which can be seen when using the Notes feature. Users who add Valentine's Day-related keywords in the Notes such as “Happy Valentine's Day”, “Happy Vday”, or “Vday” in Notes will get a DM message that will trigger the floating hearts all over the screen. The same effect can also be seen by tapping on a note with Valentine's Day-themed words.

The second feature is available in Stories. When you add a new story, you can select a special @mention in the stickers section. The new mention is pink in colour and comes with two hearts on each side of the mention. Using it to tag another person and then posting the Story will trigger a similar floating hearts animation. Similarly, tapping on another user's story with this mention will again trigger the animation.

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While the features have been rolled out and some users have reported using them, it is not yet available for all users. While the features are being introduced on the occasion of Valentine's Day, they will remain in the app until Thursday, according to the company.

The Meta-owned platform is also experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI)-based features lately. Recently, a report highlighted that Instagram is working on an AI message-writing feature that will allow users to rewrite, paraphrase, and make stylistic changes to their written messages in chats. While the feature itself is tipped to be known as Write with AI, it appears to work more like an editing tool. The full functionality of this feature is not yet known.

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Further reading: Instagram, Valentines Day, Instagram features

Akash Dutta Email Akash Dutta

Akash Dutta is a Senior Sub Editor at Gadgets 360. He is particularly interested in the social impact of technological developments and loves reading about emerging fields such as AI, metaverse, and fediverse. In his free time, he can be seen supporting his favourite football club - Chelsea, watching movies and anime, and sharing passionate opinions on food. More