Instagram tells users to ‘rage shake’ their phone if it stops working

Andrew Griffin
Thursday 18 November 2021 17:43 GMT
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(AFP via Getty Images)

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Instagram has revealed two new hidden features, which its boss says are “gems”.

They include a new “rage shake” that will encourage users to waggle their phone if it does something they don’t like.

Instagram will now also let people edit a carousel, deleting an image, without having to delete the whole thing and re-post it.

But it is the “rage shake” feature that is the most unusual. Throwing the phone around will give the option to report an issue, and was encouraged by the app’s boss, Adam Mosseri.

“Have you ever used Instagram and it just wasn’t working like it was supposed to?” he said in a video posted to Twitter.

“Maybe Stories didn’t load, maybe the audio wasn’t working, maybe you just couldn’t upload a photo and it was just getting really getting you, really just pissing you off?

“Well now, you can literally shake the phone and a little option will come up that allows you to report a problem.”

Instagram is not the first company to use shaking the phone as a way to signal something has gone wrong. Apple has long offered the option to “shake to undo” on the iPhone, where waggling the device brings up the option to revert to a previous state.

To use the “carousel edit” addition, which Mr Mosseri noted was a “finally” feature, users just click on the three dots at the top corner of the carousel. The offending photo can then be swiped away.

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