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Instagram has launched a new end-of-year feature, known as Playback, which will let you sift through your Stories archive and customize a personal recap of 2021.
Roundups like these are becoming incredibly popular with websites. Spotify Wrapped has experienced tremendous growth since 2016 and Google has made an annual tradition of compiling lists of the most popular search terms across the globe. Even Reddit has started to get in on the action, with its latest recap revealing that users are interested in three things above all else, those being gaming, cryptocurrency and (oddly enough) beekeeping.
In previous years, Meta's Instagram network has had a few unofficial equivalents to these end-of-year features, called either "Top 9" or "Best 9". These are separate apps (not affiliated with Instagram) and allowed users to put together a collage of their favorite posts from the past twelve months. They are used to highlight things like weddings, vacations, graduation ceremonies or (in the case of 2020) quarantine activities, basically letting you sum up the past year in just a handful of images.
For 2021, Instagram has debuted its own official "Playback" feature, that works in a very similar way to those Top 9 apps, yet there are a few key differences. For a start, it's a top 10 and is properly integrated with Instagram itself. In other words, you won't need to download a third-party app to get it working. Not only that, but it also gives you the unique opportunity to draw from your archive of Stories (which would otherwise have disappeared after 24 hours).
According to Meta's official description: "Playback [is] a brand-new end-of-year feature in IG Stories that will give people a chance to reflect on their year and the highlights they shared through Instagram Stories, as well as who they shared them with and everything they explored.
"Playback offers users the chance to customise their 2021 journey through Stories archive, selecting up to ten stories to share with their Instagram community that sum up their year."
How To Create an Instagram Playback Roundup
As with Top 9, you will be able to customize your own recap, by selecting up to 10 stories that you feel best reflect your year.
When you open the social media app, you will see a message at the top of your feed inviting you to create a Playback. To proceed, tap on the button that says, "View Playback".
You will then be taken through to an auto-generated recap, but you will have the option to customize it by adding or removing up to ten Stories.
Another way of accessing the feature is to just look at somebody else's 2021 recap. From there, you will see a "2021" sticker, which you can click on to be taken through to the menu where you create your own Playback (see the image below for a visual guide).
The Instagram Playback feature is live right now, but will only be running for a few weeks. According to the press release, it will disappear at some point around New Year (which incidentally is when Top 9 usually starts).
