Instagram Stories will no longer cut videos in 15-second clips

We all know the drill. You go on Instagram, scroll through your feed and spend about a couple of seconds or so on every post – at best, that is. If you find yourself not particularly invested in the content you might as well simply scroll past much of it without bothering to pay any attention whatsoever. Social media is, after all, more of a distraction most of the time rather than a way for someone to increase their attention span. After you have caught up with everything new, you could take a look at Instagram Stories.

The latter is perhaps one of the most successful features of Meta’s platform. Hence, it is only natural for Instagram to be looking for ways to make it better.

Previously, the company introduced a de-facto visibility gate on accounts by imposing a limit of 3 consecutive stories. Afterwards, you would automatically skip to the next set of stories on the line. Hence, you would not be forcibly exposed to stories beyond the third.

This change was the result of the ludicrous 100-stories limit on Stories that is currently in place. This allows users to bombard their followers with excessive content, which cannot easily be skipped. Therefore, an option that enables dodging spammy accounts is more than welcome.

Another quality-of-life update is now coming to Instagram Stories. The maximum length of a video posted on a Story has been increased to 60 seconds, up from the previous 15. Previously, a video with a length of above 15 seconds would be broken down into a series of 15-second clips.

Now, minute-long videos should be watchable (and skippable) in a single run. This is just the latest in a series of efforts to increase the average length of videos on Instagram’s platform. Previously, the time limit of Reels was also increased by 50%.