Cheryl Tan

Jun 7, 20192 min

5 Instagram Story Hacks You Might Not Know About

Updated: Aug 18, 2021

Ever seen an Instagram Story with text that has a colour not on the bar below and wonder how it’s done? How about text with a colour gradient? You’re in luck, here are five tips from us that will have you improving your Instagram (IG) Story game in no time.

1. Reposting

This might seem like a trivial thing, but I only recently found out that while you can forward interesting IG stories to your friends, there’s no option to reshare one to your own IG story unless you’re tagged in it.

It needs more than just a text mention as well. The person uploading the IG story needs to utilize the Mention feature that’s available in the menu next to the Location and Hashtag features.

2. Expanded Colour Palette for Text

There’s only 27 colours by default to choose from when you’re adding text in an IG Story, but if you long press one of the colour options, a full colour spectrum slider opens and you can pick the perfect shade to suit your story.

3. Text with Colour Gradient

Now this is the really cool trick. Here’s exactly how to do it.

  1. Type your message

  2. Use the “Select all” to highlight your text

  3. Open the colour spectrum slider and keep one finger on it

  4. Put another finger on the text, and slide both fingers at the same time

A good tip is to slide the finger that’s on the text really slowly, so you can really gradient it alphabet by alphabet.

4. Solid Colour Background

This one gives you a nice canvas for drawing, text or just about anything. You can get really creative stories by using the background over a photo and then using the eraser tool to erase the colour around the item you want to focus on!

All you need to do is pick a colour for the pencil or brush option in drawing tools, then hold your finger on the story for a while and it’ll fill the entire screen with a solid colour background.

5. Semi-Opaque Colour Background

This is similar to the previous tip, but if you have a nice picture that you’d still like to show, you can select the highlighter option in drawing tools, set the colour and hold your finger on the story. It’ll result in a colour layer over the picture that’s translucent so the photo can still be seen.

And there you have it. Now get on Instagram and post some cool Stories that will get your friends talking!