About a month ago, Instagram announced that it would be bringing its web app to the Microsoft Store, superseding the current offering for Windows 10. While the cross-platform nature of a web app makes it easier to maintain and develop, some might have had concerns that features like Direct Messages would be missing, since Instagram"s website currently doesn"t support it on desktop devices.
As it turns out, that shouldn"t be a problem, because, as The Verge reports, Instagram is bringing DMs to the desktop website starting today. To be clear, the feature is still in testing, and only a small percentage of users should be able to see it for now, but it hints at a wider rollout in the future. Not only can you access your DMs, Instagram says you can get notifications from the website if you allow it to send them through your browser.
This is especially useful so Windows 10 users don"t lose any of the existing features of the Instagram app, but anyone using a desktop browser will also benefit from being able to check their messages without needing to pick up their phone. Some browsers, like the Chromium-based Edge, also let you "install" websites as apps, so you can have quicker access to the web app without getting it from the Microsoft Store.
Windows 10 doesn"t get a ton of support from third-party developers when it comes to native apps, so web apps like this and the already-available Twitter app play a big part in being able to access your favorite services on Windows. Hopefully, more apps and services will work towards feature parity on desktop devices through web apps, and they might end up on the Microsoft Store, too.