03/11/20234min
Instagram has been doubling down on its “Reels” strategy lately by launching new features that will hopefully entice users to use them more often. The latest of these features is the ability to add song lyrics when editing, just like you already can on “Stories.”
The announcement was made today via the IG Updates and Meta channels on the app itself by both Instagram boss Adam Mosseri and CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg. The feature was added after the powers that be noticed that users were adding them manually to Reels.
New feature alert We’re rolling out a way to add song lyrics when editing your reels, just like you can on Stories: tap , add a song, and swipe left to add lyrics. We’ve seen people manually add lyrics to reels, so hope this makes it easier to use music to express yourself. Working on more updates to get creative on reels, stay tuned. – Adam Mosseri via IG Updates channel on Instagram
To add song lyrics when editing your Instagram Reels, tap on the music button, add a song, and then swipe left to add the lyrics for the song you added. The steps seem straightforward enough for anyone to follow.
The ability to add song lyrics had been available on Instagram Stories for some time now, so it is unclear why it has taken so long to bring that same capability to Reels. For those not aware, Reels differ from Instagram Stories in that Reels are public, while Stories are only shown to your followers.
However, Stories and Reels have never quite had feature parity, perhaps due to the more intimate nature of stories. That said, Instagram has continued to make Reels more feature-packed as they face increasing competition from competing platforms, such as TikTok.
Most recently, Instagram also launched new tools to make it easy for its users to create new Reels, including a new and improved templates and a template browser that is organized by categories. This browser can help users find the appropriate template to their content as it is organized by Recommended, Trending, and Saved categories.
We can expect more to come from Instagram as far as Reels are concerned, as promised by the company during the last update. New features should follow in the coming weeks, such as the ability to automatically add text and transitions that were used in a past reel.