Instagram enhances Story features with stickers, holiday content, hands-free mode, and save story option

In a recent flurry of Instagram updates, today the team announced even more new features coming out for Stories today. Rolling out now as a part of version 10.3, Instagram has added stickers, limited time holiday content, and one-tap video recording.

The new features give Instagram users more ways to customize their experience and have fun sharing with others. It seems competition with Snapchat and others is motivating Instagram to bolster its features. First up, here’s a look at stickers and new text options:

After you’ve taken a photo or video, you’ll see a new stickers button next to the text and drawing tools. Tap the smiley face to find customizable stickers for weather, the current time and even your location. Adding a location sticker works the same as adding location to the posts you share to feed — simply choose or search for your location. People watching your story will be able to tap the sticker to learn more about the location, but your story won’t show up on the location page itself.

You’ll find the stickers button along with other options in the top right hand corner. You can also choose from multiple styles for each sticker. The updates for adding text includes the following:

You can now add multiple text fields to any photo or video and choose left, center or right alignment for each text field. You can add as much text to your photo or video as you’d like — simply keep tapping the text button to add more.

Next is the holiday themed content which will be available for the next few weeks.

Candy cane brush and holiday stickers: for a limited time, a festive candy cane brush and a variety of holiday-themed stickers help make any moment more fun.

The last two features that will start rolling out today are a one-tap video feature called ‘Hands-Free’ and an option to save your last 24 hours worth of Stories (saved stories is only available for iOS at the time).

A new ‘Hands-Free’ option in the format picker lets you start recording a video with just one tap. Whether you’re playing a guitar solo, building a snowman or perfecting your handstand, there’s no need to press and hold. Finally, on iOS, you can now save your entire story from the past 24 hours to your camera roll as a single video.

These newest features don’t seem to be live for everyone on version 10.3 quite yet, but they should be rolling out soon. You can download Instagram from the Google Play Store.