New Instagram Desktop Heart: You Can Now See Your Notifications Not Just On Your Phone

Instagram has made a beautiful change to their desktop website, for folks who like to check their Instagram account on places other than their mobile devices. That is, as long as the Instagram user isn’t in Pyongyang, North Korea, as seen in the above photo from Saturday, June 20, 2015. The only kind of Instagram notifications those users get — both on their computer screens and smartphone screens — are warnings that Instagram is a blacklisted site full of harmful content that can’t be accessed.

All other Instagram users, however, are celebrating the new Instagram updates. Now users who access Instagram via their desktop computers, like their laptops and MacBook Air machines, can simply click the heart seen at the top right-hand side of Instagram to witness their notifications. As seen in the following photo, everyone who liked your photo, commented on your video, mentioned your Instagram account, or messaged you on Instagram can now be seen via the drop-down box.

Instagram beefs up web interface with activity tab https://t.co/dvzIuORM8f

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) March 23, 2016

Instead of having to wade through your notifications on your phone or tablet’s notification screen — or loading up the Instagram app and clicking on the hearts and new follower notifications to see what’s going on with your account — the desktop notifications offer Instagram users one more way to keep track of their account changes.

It may seem like a small change for Instagram to make, but those who are proficient at using Instagram know that it’s one more step in convenience. Instagram notifications can tend to get “lost” in a long litany of notifications on the smaller screen of a phone, especially if a person has plenty of Instagram notifications, and being able to see and interact with the notification on a larger desktop website makes a difference.

Expect to see notifications from Instagram like you’d see on your mobile device, such as when one of your Facebook friends joins Instagram, if your accounts are connected in that manner. Already, folks on Twitter and across social media are writing that the new change to Instagram will save them so much time. After all, some people don’t just use Instagram for social connecting — they use it for business purposes as well. Whether they are a photographer looking for clients, a journalist getting good feedback on stories, or an artist responding to requests for prices of their artwork prints, it helps to be able to timely know your Instagram notifications while working on your desktop.

As reported by NextWeb, Instagram hasn’t gone so far as to allow Instagram users to upload photos from their desktops, but social media mavens will likely hope that it’s the next step the social networking giant offers.

Now that notifications for all sorts of Instagram activity can be seen on laptops and desktops outside of the mobile app, people are saying that Instagram is becoming more like Facebook.

Some are using the news to wonder aloud how other folks posts such great photos to their Instagram accounts. Facebook user Michele Mele wrote her feelings about Instagram on Facebook.

“I don’t understand how people upload such pretty pictures to Instagram using their phones… My iPhone photos aren’t all that great… Are people really using high quality cameras then transferring the pictures over to their phones?? Seems like a waste of time to me. I just post cute pics of my dogs and nephew/niece.”

Responses to her query included the fact that many Instagram photos are edited with a photo editing app.

[Image via Mon’s Images / Shutterstock.com]