Instagram rolled out its Stories feature over a year ago. While the feature blatantly ripped off Snapchat's highly popular Stories feature, it did manage to score over 250 million daily users. This is indeed quite an accomplishment for Instagram to stay in the competition as Facebook's Stories feature failed miserably. However, Instagram never stops experimenting with new features and extensionsto make the experience more exciting for users. This time around, the company is adding large preview boxes for the Stories feature between the standard Instagram posts. In addition to this, the popular photo-sharing platform is also testing a new stop-motion camera. Let's see what it will have in store for users.

Instagram Adds Mid-Feed Large Preview Tiles For Stories, new Camera Feature Under Testing

The Stories preview design has been changed to tiles or boxes which are now way more prominent than it used to be. Compared to the previous iteration of the mid-feed Stories previews, which were way smaller and circular, kind of looked the same as on the top of the feed, the new ones are pretty noticeable. However, the company says that it is not looking forward to replacing the ones at the top of the feed.

In a statement to TechCrunch, an Instagram spokesperson said that the new feature allows users to preview“stories from the people and accounts you care about.”

"We recently updated the design of the stories bar that you see while scrolling through feed. This update makes it easier to preview the stories from the people and accounts you care about."

Apart from the gigantic Stories previews in mid-feed, Instagram is also testing yet another camera-related feature. The platform is testing a new Stop Motion camera tool as discovered by The Verge. The Stop Motion camera on Instagram will allow you to take a series of photos which it will then stitch together to make a GIF. This is a pretty demanding feature and has been missing from the app to date. While most flagship smartphones already support a GIF creation tool, the feature was specifically absent from the photo-sharing platform.

The Stop Motion camera feature will be available inside the Story camera, located alongside the recently released Superzoom option and Boomerang option. While the feature is not yet available to users, Instagram has confirmed that the feature is work-in-progress and rests in the testing phase. It will probably be released in the coming weeks, so be sure to stay tuned.

This is it for now, folks. What are your thoughts on the new larger previews for Stories between posts? Share your views with us in the comments.