Instagram to roll back its Shops tab next month: details

Instagram, Meta’s popular photo-sharing app, brings some changes to its navigation bar. While the Shop tab is removed from the home page, the button to create a new post on Instagram is placed at the bottom center of the navigation bar. The Reels button is also placed on the right side of the navigation bar below. Instagram introduced shopping features in its mobile app in 2018 and added a new Shop tab to its app’s home screen in 2020.

As announced by Meta in a support articlethe shop tab is removed from the Instagram app in February 2023. The social media giant said it was making some changes to the navigation bar to make it easier for people to “share and connect with their friends and interests.” Changes also include the Create New Post button replacing the Reels button in the middle of the bottom navigation bar. The reels button will slide to the right as you do this.

While the app will no longer have a Shop tab, the company said it will continue to invest in the shopping experience within the Instagram app for people and businesses across feeds, stories, reels, ads and more. So, users can still set up and run their businesses on Instagram. The shop function on Instagram is only available in selected countries.

Notably, Instagram rolled out shopping features in 2018 and introduced the Shop tab during the year COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020, along with the Reels tab. The feature was added to help small businesses increase their reach and connect with users via Instagram.

Instagram last month rolls Several new features including Notes, Honest Stories, Group Profiles, Shared Collections and more. The Notes feature allows users to update their friends with text and emojis, and receive replies to notes as Direct Messages (DMs) in the user’s inbox. Instagram’s candid stories feature, on the other hand, allows users to click on a candid photo from Stories camera and share their real-time activities with their friends and followers.