Sometimes, when you send a message to someone, you want an instant reply.
And while there are other apps and messaging platforms which enable quick communication, if you see something on Instagram that you want to send to a friend and receive an immediate response, knowing when they are online and active can be really useful.
Luckily, Instagram enables users to see when people are active, as well as when they were last active, quickly and easily.
How to Know When Someone Is Active Now
The easiest way to see who is active is to head to the DM inbox in your Instagram app.
All active users who are online at that moment will be showcased along the top of your inbox, with a green dot to the side of their profile picture.
Clicking on to their profile picture will open a direct chat with them, which also says ‘Active Now’ underneath their name.
And if they are both active and responding to your message, this note will be replaced by ‘Typing’ – letting you know that you will soon receive the response you wanted!
NOTE: If the person you are looking for isn’t easily visible on the profile picture listed across your inbox, open a new chat with them and see if the ‘Active Now’ label is present.
How to Know When Someone Was Last Active
You can see when someone was last active by navigating to your message history with them, in your DM inbox. Underneath their name in your list of messages you will see a note that says ‘Active 1h ago’, or ‘Active Yesterday’; whatever is true of their last session on the app.
It is worth noting that users can switch off their activity status, to prevent other users from knowing when they are online. If you switch off your own activity status, you will also be preventing from seeing the status of other users.
Knowing When a User Read Your Message
If you’re not sure when someone was last online, but you do want to see when they opened and read your message, head to your message stream with them in your Instagram DM inbox.
If yours was the last message sent, you will see in grey text an indication of when the user opened your message. This will say ‘Seen’ or ‘Seen on XX’ depending on their settings.
While there is no definite way to know if someone will read your message instantly, or respond to a GIF or reel that you send them quickly, being able to see if someone is active can help you to predict when they might get back to you!
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