How to like someone's Instagram Story without sending a DM

You can now like Instagram Stories without cluttering their direct messages.

In February, Instagram launched “Private Story Likes.” The feature allows users to discreetly react to a Story without the person receiving a notification in their direct messages.

❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️

Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.

Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022

“Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s Stories without sending a DM,” Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tweeted. “Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet.”

When you receive a “Private Story Like” it won’t show up on your public like counts or in your direct messages. Instead, the Stories view sheet will show the person’s handle with a heart next to it.

“The idea here is to make sure that people can express more support for each other, but also to clean up DMs a little bit,” Mosseri said.

How to send a “Private Story Like” on Instagram

The feature began to roll out on Feb. 14, so most people should have it now. Using the tool is pretty simple.

Step 1: Open a Story, located at the top of your Instagram feed.

Step 2: Hit the heart icon on the bottom right of the screen, next to the message field. Now the person has received your lowkey reaction.