Instagram Rolls Out Status Dots For DMs When Your Friends Are Online

You can easily tell if someone is ore has recently been active in Messenger, just look for the little dot underneath your contacts. Now Facebook is adding a similar feature to Instagram. The standalone photo-sharing app announced in a blog post that it is adding status indicators to contacts, which appear next a user's profile picture.

"DMing friends and connecting over the content you love is more fun when you know your friends are there to see it. This update gives you the ability to have more of those realtime conversations while giving you the control to hide your status altogether," Instagram states.

Whenever one of your contacts is active on Instagram, you will see a green dot next to their profile picture. This will appear in various spaces within the app, including the Direct inbox and your friends list when you share a post from feed. Instagram says you will only see status for friends who follow you or people who you have DMed.

Of course, you might not be interested in letting your friends see how much time you spend on Instagram (privacy and all that). There is also the concern that they will know you are actively ignoring them, if they send a message and you don't promptly reply. If you are worried about those kinds of scenarios, don't sweat it, you can turn off the activity status.

Assuming you are running an updated version of the app that supports the new feature, here's how you can disable it:

• Open the app and click on your profile
• Tap on the Gear icon
• Tap on Activity Status under the Privacy and Security section
• Flip the switch to Off (it's turned on by default)

That's all there is to it, now you can go back to ignoring people without the guilt!

The status indicator is the latest in a flurry of updates to Instagram. Most of the previous updates have been focused on Stories, however, as Facebook looks to take on Snapchat in the photo and video sharing space.