Photo: Nuchylee (Shutterstock)
This week, you might have noticed a curious—albeit frustrating—issue affecting Instagram on iPhone: When you went to view someone’s new stories, the app would replay all their old stories, as well. This happened anytime they’d upload a new story, meaning you’d possibly have to skip through the same stories multiple times a day in order to get the latest updates. After two days of jumping through repeating stories on iOS, Instagram finally has a fix.
It isn’t clear where this bug came from, nor is it obvious how many users have been affected. All we know is the issue seems to be isolated to iPhones, as Android users have had their Instagram apps remember their stories. We also know the bug seems to have started up around Monday: The Verge reported some of its staffers on iOS had experienced the bug, while users across Reddit and Twitter also complained of repeating stories.
Some of us at Lifehacker are affected, as well. I’ve had to tap through plenty of repeating stories on my own feed. At first, I thought it was a weird glitch, but obviously, it’s been happening for two days. One of our editors experienced the issue in DMs, too: Someone would reply to one of their stories, and they’d have to tap through all their stories if they couldn’t figure out from the thumbnail which one the friend replied to.
Instagram’s parent company, Meta, confirmed on Tuesday that the company was aware of the issue, and that a fix was incoming. Wherever this bug stemmed from, Instagram developers seem to have discovered and squashed it, as there is now an update available to fix things on your end.
Unlike some Instagram fixes, you need install the update on your iPhone in order for the patch to take effect. Sometimes, an app like Instagram is able to issue a server side update, meaning the fix is implemented without the end user needing to do anything at all. However, it seems whatever the issue with these repeating stories is, the fix has to be installed on each user’s iPhone.
To install the update on your iPhone, go to the App Store, then tap your profile in the top right. Pull down on the page to refresh it, then scroll down to find the Instagram update, which should be version 239.1 (at the time of this article). The update comes in at 196.2MB, but doesn’t go into any detail about what exactly is fixed. Rather, the release notes simply say, “The latest version contains bug fixes and performance improvements.”
If you have Automatic Downloads enabled for App Updates, Instagram will update on its own. However, it may take some time: Automatic iOS updates can sometimes take weeks, and while that doesn’t seem to necessarily apply to apps, it isn’t clear how quickly something like Instagram will update by itself. If you want to make sure your friends’ stories stop repeating today, you’ll want to install the update manually.
[9to5Mac]
