Update: Meta has confirmed that it’s working on this feature, but has not revealed when we can expect it to launch.
There are signs that an Instagram Friends Map may be in development, seemingly replicating the Snap Map location sharing feature first launched on Snapchat back in 2017 …
Snap Map
Snap Map was first launched as a way for Snapchat users to view content by location, but also allowed users to share their own location with friends.
If you and a friend follow one another, you can share your locations with each other so you can see where they’re at and what’s going on around them!
The feature has been expanded a number of times since then:
Instagram Friends Map
Developer and reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi last November spotted that Instagram appeared to be working on a Friends map, and has now discovered a series of screens appearing to show how it will work.
Introducing Instagram’s Friend Map. Your friends, on a map. Discover what friends are sharing.
Leave notes for only the Map. Find a new excuse to share what’s happening wherever you’re at.
- Choose which friends to share with
- Your location is end-to-end encryped
- Anything shared with a location tag will appear on the map
Choose who can see your last active location. This won’t affect the visibility of any notes you leave on map. You can always change this in settings. Your location will only update when you open Instagram.
As always with this type of discovery, there’s no knowing when or if the feature will be launched, but Paluzzi does have a good track record of highlighting features which do indeed make it into the app.
Mashable notes that this wouldn’t be the first time that Instagram has cloned features from other social media apps.
Stories were ripped from Snapchat. Reels are a TikTok dupe. It copied Notes and Threads from Twitter/X and Candid from BeReal.
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