Instagram adds TikTok-style repost feature for Reels

Reposts are coming to Instagram.

If this seems familiar to you, it's because it is. It looks like this feature will work pretty much exactly how the feature works on TikTok, complete with its own "reposts" tab on users' profiles and everything. Similar to TikTok, reposts will show up in your friends' feeds and in the cursed "friends" tab on Reels — which has now expanded globally.

Up until now, users have had two options for sharing other users' posts: share it on their Instagram Story, which is only live for 24 hours, or collaborate on a post, which requires approval from both users.

It's easy to understand the reasoning here. Instagram is pushing Reels on its users, and reposts are a surefire way to encourage engagement on Reels. The feature launched globally today, but Instagram has been testing it out for a while. In June, Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that it was testing the ability for users to repost posts. Before that, users had noticed the company testing the feature as far back as 2022.

Of course, as TechCrunch noted in its post about the test, not everyone will be excited about the change. When Instagram launches anything new, it's frequently met with a chorus of naysayers who range from those who simply don't like change to those who (reasonably) don't want their feed bogged down with yet another feature — on top of Stories, Reels, Notes, DMs, Blends, Tags, and so, so many ads.