Instagram just rolled out DMs for the web

Instagram just revealed web-based DMs to everyone. So finally, after several years of only being able to access your messages on the app, you can look at them in your browser.

The site’s been testing web DMs for several months, and rolled out DMs to a test group back in January, with the promise of rolling them out more broadly at some point in the future. This was the first public test, as the feature had reportedly been in the works for quite a while. It’s now rolled the feature out to everyone globally as of today, finally.

Given that the world is currently running on digital communications, this is a small but welcome addition to one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. I don’t know about all of you, but I spend much more time on my desktop than I used to, and that includes accessing the social media sites I formerly only used on my phone. If you’re an even modestly-sized business or influencer, or you just have a lot of your conversations via Instagram Direct, then than this will probably make your life a lot easier.

So if you’re looking for your DMs on the web client, you can find it in the top-right corner of the site. You’ll be able to find all the DMs you can access on It’s got most of the features of the mobile Direct, including an emoji keyboard. You can also go directly to your inbox from this link.

Instagram still has a lot to work on — most of the replies to this news involved asking the company to finally get off its duff and make an iPad app. As others pointed out, you still can’t watch Instagram Live streams on desktop. That said, the company has released a few interesting features in the last few months. Last month, for example, it launched the co-watching feature that allowed users to share posts during video chat. It’s also rolled out a coronavirus donation sticker, which links to a list of reputable nonprofits to which users can donate.