Instagram brings its classic icons back to celebrate its 10th birthday

By Oliver Haslam
published

Instagram Reels on iPhone X
Instagram Reels on iPhone X (Image credit: Luke Filipowicz / iMore)

What you need to know

  • Today is Instagram's tenth birthday.
  • A new Easter egg lets users select one from many of the app's most iconic icons.
  • Also, it turns out I'm very old now.

Social network Instagram is celebrating its tenth birthday by bringing back some of the icons that we old-timers will remember from back in the day. The icons are hidden somewhat, but anyone who knows the special commands will be able to hunt them down pretty easily.

Then all you need to do is decide which of Instagram's classic icons you're going to use.

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Getting to the new icons is pretty easy. Just open the app and then head to its settings. A long swipe down on the screen will reveal everything.

At the time of writing it doesn't seem like this is available to everyone just yet. I've also only seen it work on iPhones, but I've got the folks at Android Central trying it out as well.

Whether these icons will stick around isn't clear, but we can hope!

My personal favorite will always be the very first Instagram icon. Let me know which was yours!

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.