Instagram rolls out drawing and sticker options for DMs

Having someone sliding into your DMs on Instagram could be about to look a little different. The social media platform is rolling out the ability to adorn direct messages with stickers as well as freehand drawing.

As this has been in testing for a reasonable amount of time already, these options may already be familiar to subsets of Instagram users – but now they are rolling out to everyone. If you are yet to experience these new messaging tools, they may not be quite what you expect them to be.

This is more than a way to send stickers as a message, and more than a way to send drawings as DMs. The new feature essentially transforms a chat into a collaborative board which participants can doodle over as they see fit.

In a post to Threads, Instagram says: “about to be even more unserious in the DMs…

now you can doodle and drop stickers and emojis all over your DMs”

As you can see from the image shared by Instagram, stickers and drawing can be added anywhere on screen, rather than being limited to a small chat box.

The new Draw option can be accessed from the menu to the right of the message composition box, and you can then choose pen color and other options.

Quite what Instagram believes it will be used for is not really clear, but it is a communication option that lends itself to various things – particularly the drawing component.

It can be used to highlight something that has been said in a chat, but circling or underlining text, for example. It can also be used to simply send fun sketches, or to help illustrate something you have been trying to describe.

Something that may prove annoying to some users is the fact that the doodle and stickers are not permanent. They will vanish as the conversation continues, so they are not a great way to share something hugely important.

The feature is rolling out right now, so if you don’t yet see the option to draw on your messages, it should not be long before it lands in your copy of the app.