Instagram now lets you livestream with a friend

Instagram is continuously adding more and more features to its app to make sharing your moments as fun and easy as possible, and while it can feel bloated at times, some of the updates are actually pretty neat. Instagram is now rolling out version 20 of its official application, and the big new feature this time around is the ability to livestream with a friend.

When hosting a livestream on Instagram, you’ll now see a new “Add” icon near the bottom right. Tapping on this will bring up a menu of people you can choose to go live with (people that are watching your livestream), and once you select the person you’d like to join you, they’ll receive an invite to livestream right along with you.

Once your friend joins, your screen will split in two to show your stream on one half and your friend’s on the other. Your friend can leave whenever they’d like, and you also have the option to remove them and invite someone else. Also, if someone that you follow goes live and someone else joins their stream, you’ll see both of their profile photos next to each other so you can see exactly who’s livestreaming with who.

Instagram first started testing this feature back in August of this year, so while it isn’t a big surprise, it’s still one we’re happy to see. I personally haven’t jumped on the livestream bandwagon yet, but I imagine people that have will be ecstatic to play around with something like this.

Instagram taking new steps to reduce offensive and spammy comments using machine learning