What used to be Snapchat is now Instagram Stories for many people, and now watch Instagram Stories in browser. People have 24 hours to watch little videos of their Instagram friends and influencers. Mini videos from everyday life are for many viewers, like little mini daily soaps, what used to be Good Times Bad Times is now replaced by Instagram Stories.

Often Instagram Stories are more popular than normal Instagram pictures, because you are simply more real to the person and get a more direct connection to the person than is possible with a glossed over Instagram picture.

Instagram and Instagram Stories only worked on smartphones for a long time. On the laptop and PC, it was then only possible to call up the user’s profiles and embed pictures in blog posts, for example. You could additionally log in and comment, as well as delete comments on your own pictures.

The Instagram app was initially only available for iPhone, before an Android version was developed. The usability with a Windows Phone further strengthened the connection to the browser. Certainly one of the reasons for the new Instagram Stories in the browser option.

Watch Instagram Stories in browser

From now on, you can also view your friends as Instagram Stories in the browser. If you don’t want to reach for your phone all the time, you now have a convenient way to watch Stories on your laptop or PC. So if you want to be entertained unobtrusively, you’ll probably be happy to fall back on this variant of Instagram Stories in the browser.

For this option, you simply have to call up the Instagram page in the browser and log in or be already logged in. If you already have your profile open, you click on the Instagram logo or the Instagram lettering in the upper left corner. You immediately see the feed of subscribed Instagram users, as you know it so far.

To the right of the feed in the sidebar, you can now find your own Stories and those of your subscribed friends. If desired, you can now click on the profile picture of which you want to see the story – alternatively, you can select “Watch all” if you want to see all Instagram stories in the browser.

As usual, you can now see the videos in a comfortable size in the browser. Only the links from websites, hashtags and linked people cannot be clicked. It is therefore not yet as interactive as on the smartphone, but rather to be seen as an Instagram Story Viewer.

You can see four of your subscribed friends in the right bar. If you look at Stories via the browser, they are synchronized with the app so that you do not look at the same Story twice.

If you have “muted” Stories from some friends on Instagram, they will not be shown in the browser either. I’ve already explained how to mute Stories in more detail in my blog post “How does Instagram Stories work?”.

I think the possibility to watch the Stories in the browser is perfect, but it’s almost a shame that you have to be a fan and follower of someone to be able to watch Instagram Stories in the browser and not just spontaneously “peek” into someone’s Story.

So what are we missing on Instagram right now? What does the future hold for Instagram? What’s coming as new updates and developments?

As if you ask me, I fully expect that soon you will be able to see your friends’ Instagram Stories on Facebook, since Facebook Stories has not been adopted. I generally expect further linking of Instagram and Facebook. Appropriate experiments are currently running by Facebook in Portugal, with a selection of users.

The whole Messenger function will certainly merge even further, just as you can currently already reply to comments from Instagram on Facebook. However, I’m currently more excited about the fact that replies are now directly below the appropriate comment when replying to a comment on your smartphone.

I’m all for anything that brings more order and clarity to apps and programs and our lives. I think if Instagram and Facebook are even more linked, it will also make it more fun again for many. I would be happy at least for my Facebook community if more live content would automatically be online here as well. So it remains exciting…