As announced by Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, the social media application is testing three different layouts for its home screen. Each one involves adding a dedicated tab for Reels and Shops in the navigation bar at the bottom.
We’re starting to test different versions of Instagram’s home screen – when you open the app you’ll soon see a Reels tab and a Shop tab in one of these three layouts. pic.twitter.com/WLmjAwYwFW
— Adam Mosseri 😷 (@mosseri) September 9, 2020
The first layout features Home, Reels, Add, Shops, and Profile tabs from left to right in the bottom bar, while Notifications, Explore, and Messages options are moved to the top-right corner. The second variant comes with Home, Explore, Reels, Shops, and Profile tabs in the navigation bar, with Notifications and Messages options in the top-right and Add option in the top-left. The final layout offers six tabs in the bottom - Home, Explore, Reels, Shops, Notifications, and Profile, with Add and Messages options moved to the top-right.
Reels, which was announced last month, is the short video format. After the ban on TikTok by the Indian Government, Facebook and Snapchat tried to capture the void in the market by launching similar services of their own.
Shops, which was available as a button in the Explore tab, will now be featured on the home page. The feature is aimed at finding and buying things via a single hub.
Instagram is also running a separate test wherein Stories are also visible on the Facebook main app.