Here’s a feature we’ve had on our “That would be nice” list for a while – the ability to like an Instagram story.

The social media platform announced on Monday that it was adding likes to Instagram Stories. These likes will not be publicly visible but the intention is to clean up your direct message inbox.

Before this feature the only way to interact with a user’s story was by sending them a direct message. The hope, according to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, is that this feature will help to clean up inboxes as well as drive engagement.

“So now as you go through Stories, between send message and that little paper airplane, there will be a heart icon. And if you tap on it, it will send the author of that story a like and that like will show up in the viewer sheet not in your DM thread with them,” Mosseri said in a video posted to Twitter.

The likes will only be visible on the viewer sheet for that story. What is unclear is whether story authors will be able to see exactly who liked a story. Mosseri’s wording seems to suggest that a heart icon will be displayed alongside a viewer’s name but we don’t have access to this feature yet and so can’t confirm the intricacies as yet.

While this is a nice feature, what Instagram users really want is a return to a chronological timeline. In that regard Instagram has said that it is working to roll out the ability to toggle what your feed looks like in the first quarter of this year.

❤️ Private Story Likes ❤️

Starting to roll out today, you can now send some love by liking people’s stories without sending a DM.

Likes on stories are private and do not have counts. Rather, they appear as hearts next to people’s handles in your Stories view sheet. 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/l56Rmzgnnw

— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 14, 2022