Instagram rolls out new Map feature in India to enhance social connections

Instagram’s new Map feature provides users and their friends with a simple, seamless way to stay connected

by e4m Staff
Published: Oct 6, 2025 4:10 PM | 2 min read

The Instagram Map, a new feature to stay up-to-date with friends, was announced in August. Users can opt in to sharing their last active location with friends they choose, and they can turn it off anytime. They can also open the map to see content their friends and favorite creators are posting from interesting or fun locations.

No matter how the map is used, users and their friends have a new, lightweight way to connect with each other. Now, the feature rolls out in India, with several improvements to user education and the product experience since the initial launch of the Map.

To help make it clearer if users are sharing their location on the map, they will now see a more prominent, persistent indicator at the top of the map reminding them whether or not they’re sharing their location, or if their device location is off entirely. There is also an indicator under the profile photo in the Notes tray that clarifies if location sharing is off.

Instagram also heard from people who thought that sharing content with a tagged location meant they were sharing their location on the map. To address this, profile photos no longer appear on top of the content, helping clarify that it’s not someone’s actual location.

Additionally, an educational reminder informs users that when they add a location tag to a story, reel, or post, it will appear on the Map.

Lastly, to reduce confusion about how location-tagged content appears on the Map, Instagram has added a preview feature that shows users how their content will look on the Map when they add a location to their posts.