Instagram now lets you speed up reels just like on TikTok

Meta-owned Instagram is copying yet another feature from TikTok. This time, it’s the ability for users to play a reel at 2x speed by long pressing on the right or left side of their screen.

When TikTok first launched, videos could only be 15 seconds long. As the years passed and TikTok rose in popularity, the social network rolled out support for longer videos. With this, TikTok introduced the option for users to speed up videos, as they had been trained to consume content more quickly.

Instagram Reels also started off by allowing users to post videos that were only up to 15 seconds in length. Today, users can share videos that are up to 3 minutes long. Like TikTok, Instagram wants to give users the option to watch more content quickly with the new fast-forward option.

The ability to fast-forward a video increases the chances of a viewer actually reaching the end of longer videos, especially since the idea behind Reels is to offer users quick, bite-sized pieces of entertainment. This can be attributed to concerns that the rise of short-form video content may be negatively impacting our attention spans and ability to focus on longer-form content.

Given that Instagram Reels is a direct clone of TikTok, it’s not surprising that the platform is borrowing specific features from the short-form video platform. It’s not the first time Instagram has done so either, as its Remix feature is a copy of TikTok’s Duet tool.