Instagram finally launches feature users have been crying out for, for years…

Instagram has been desperate to regain its edge from rival social platform TikTok, going so far as to offer thousands of dollars to popular TikTok creators in recent years, hoping to lure them on to its own short video feature, Reels.

Now, Instagram has belatedly added a long-desired feature to Reels to make it more competitive: The ability to download short videos from Reels for reposting across the rest of social media.

The ability for TikTok users to download a watermarked version of their favorite videos and post them anywhere online has helped immeasurably to catapult the Chinese-owned platform from niche social site to global phenomenon. 

Instagram hopes to draw new users to Reels with this same strategy, while still allaying the concerns of its most privacy conscious members.  

Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri posted an announcement about the new download feature for Reels to his own Instagram, using the platform’s new ‘broadcast channels’ feature Tuesday

Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri posted an announcement about the new download feature for Reels to his own Instagram, using the platform’s new ‘broadcast channels’ feature on Tuesday.

Mosseri noted that the feature protects private accounts by preventing their followers from downloading and disseminating their Reels, as well as also allowing public Instagram accounts to disable the new feature, if they so desire. 

For now, Mosseri wrote, the feature will only be available in the US, but if past updates are any indication users could be downloading Reels worldwide in the near future. 

Instagram users will be able to access the feature, the CEO said, by tapping on the ‘Share’ icon for the desired Reel and clicking ‘Download.’

Last August, YouTube took similar steps to catch up to TikTok — when they began adding watermarks to their similar YouTube ‘Shorts’ feature downloads.

While Mosseri did not explicitly mention that platform would be watermarking downloaded Reels, the examples posted, as first caught by TechCrunch, did show videos branded with an Instagram logo and the user’s account name. 

Back in February of 2021, Instagram told creators that it would begin to specifically target and de-rank watermarked clips from other platforms, like TikTok. 

So, their new move suggests that Instagram might well be taking on some risk of down-ranking retaliation with their new Reels feature itself.