What Are Instagram Features? (90-Minute Videos)
Instagram Features are horizontal videos up to 90 minutes, in testing since 26 October 2026. What the format does, where it works, and what it cannot do.
Instagram Features are long horizontal videos, up to 90 minutes each, and they are the biggest change to what Instagram will hold since Reels arrived. Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, and Tessa Lyons, its VP of product, announced the format on 26 October 2026 in a video from the two of them (Android Central). This guide covers what Features actually is, where you can watch it today, and the part the announcement did not cover: what happens when you save one of these videos and later need one sentence out of ninety minutes.
What are Instagram Features?
Features is a new upload format rather than a new app or a new tab. Three things define it:
- Horizontal video, up to 90 minutes. Reels are vertical and short; a Feature is widescreen and can run an hour and a half (GSMArena).
- Aimed at people with long material. Podcasters are the group Instagram names first, with full episodes or long cuts of them, alongside creators whose work does not fit in a minute.
- Discovered through a short clip. A long video does not land in the feed at full length. Viewers meet a short clip of it and tap through to the whole thing, with up to eight separate short clips able to point at one long video (Online Tech Tips). Preview cuts also surface in Reels (The National).
Mosseri was blunt about the turn: "For a long time, I have been against doing long-form video on Instagram" (TechCrunch). Lyons said Reels "is still going to be a core part of Instagram", and Mosseri described the two formats as needing to be symbiotic. So this is an addition, not a replacement.
What nobody has settled is money. Asked how creators will earn from long video, a Meta spokesperson said it is "too early to share a long-term monetization model", and Meta has not said whether ads will run in these videos. Existing brand deals carry over, which is the whole of it for now.
Where can you watch Instagram Features right now?
Not in many places. The sequence so far:
- Brazil first. Instagram tested long video with creators there before announcing anything.
- A small United States test, now widening. The initial test covers selected US creators and is expanding; reporting points at tens of thousands of US accounts, with the format expected to reach all US users by the end of 2026 or early 2027 (GSMArena).
- No date for anywhere else. Instagram has named no other country and no timeline, and the announcement video itself was not viewable outside the US (Tech Times). There is no UK, EU, Canadian or Australian release.
Mosseri put it at "going to take a little bit of time", with most of the pieces rolling out in testing over the following month. If you are outside the United States, the realistic expectation is that you will see long videos from US creators before you can post one.
The television side is reported two ways and is worth treating as unsettled. Instagram for TV started as a Reels pilot on Fire TV, then reached Google TV, Samsung sets and, in the US, Apple TV; The National describes that app as where Features content will live, while GSMArena says Features launches on mobile first with TV support coming later. Instagram has published nothing precise enough to settle it.
What a 90-minute video does to a library of saves
This is where the format stops being a creator story and becomes a viewer problem. A minute of video is something you can re-watch to find a line. Ninety minutes is not.
Our own corpus gives the scale of the jump. Across 762 saved Instagram videos with a transcript, the median one runs 53 seconds and carries about 171 spoken words (as of November 2026). A single Feature at the cap is roughly 100 times the length of the median Instagram save people are making today.
The numbers for long video are already in the corpus, because people save long YouTube material into it. Of 1,829 saved videos with transcripts, 440, about a quarter, run 20 minutes or longer, and those carry a median of roughly 6,200 spoken words. The 61 that run an hour or more carry a median of about 15,500 spoken words (all as of November 2026).
Fifteen thousand spoken words is a short book. What Instagram gives you to find your way back into it is a grid of thumbnails in your Saved collections, exactly as it does for a 15-second Reel. That gap is the honest subject of this page, and it is the same one behind searching saved Instagram Reels and the wider guide to searching inside saved videos.
What Instagram Features does not do with a video you saved
Worth being precise, because the announcement was about uploading, not about retrieval:
- No search inside the video. Instagram's Saved tab filters by collection and nothing else. There is no box for a phrase from the audio.
- No transcript shown to the viewer. Instagram has documented nothing about transcripts, searchable captions or chapters for Features. Absence of documentation is not a promise either way, but there is nothing to rely on today.
- Chapters depend on the creator. The closest thing is the set of short clips that point at one long video. Where a creator cut eight of them, those work like chapter markers. Where a creator cut none, you get a 90-minute bar.
- Saving is a queue, not an index. TechCrunch notes you can save a longer video to send it to the Instagram app on your TV. That helps you watch it later. It does nothing for finding the four minutes you actually wanted.
- It probably is not available to you. For most of the world, the first contact with Features will be watching one, not posting one.
How to find a moment inside a long Instagram video you saved
Ordered from free and native to tool-assisted. All of these work today.
- Scrub the timeline. Free, reliable, slow. Fine once. Hopeless as a habit across dozens of long saves.
- Use the creator's linked clips as chapters. If a Feature has short clips pointing into it, each one tells you roughly where a topic sits. This is the best native option and it costs nothing, but it exists only when the creator made the clips.
- Read the caption. Podcasters who cross-post often paste a timestamped rundown. Check before you scrub.
- Find the same episode somewhere else. Most long-form creators publish the same material to YouTube or a podcast app. YouTube has a transcript panel you can read and search, and chapters when the creator adds them. If the episode exists there, retrieval is solved. Our guide to making saved YouTube videos searchable covers that path.
- Use a transcript search tool. SavedThat is one: you add a video by pasting its link, through the browser extension or from the share sheet, it transcribes the speech, and a search returns the moment with a timestamp rather than the video. It is a search tool, not an agent, and it only knows the videos you have added to it. Other tools in this category exist and some are good at neighbouring jobs, such as highlighting long YouTube talks.
| Option | What it searches | Cost | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scrubbing the timeline | Nothing, you do the searching | Free | Does not scale past a few videos |
| Linked short clips | Topic by clip, roughly | Free | Only if the creator cut them |
| The post caption | Whatever the creator typed | Free | Most captions have no timestamps |
| The same episode on YouTube | The transcript panel, chapters | Free | Only if the creator cross-posted |
| Transcript search (SavedThat) | The spoken content, with timestamps | First 5 videos free, no card | Only videos you have added to it |
Instagram Features versus YouTube, from a viewer's seat
The comparison everyone is drawing is about creators and ad money. For a viewer who saves things, the difference is narrower and sharper: YouTube has spent years on retrieval, and Instagram has not started.
YouTube gives you a transcript panel, chapters, playlists you can nest and a search box inside your own library. None of that is clever technology. It is just the assumption that a long video is something you come back to. Instagram's product has grown up around a different assumption, that a video is something you watch once in a scroll, and the Saved grid is what that assumption looks like after ten years.
Features changes what Instagram will hold. It does not yet change what Instagram will help you find, which is also why Meta Muse, Meta's own agent for saved content, matters more than a 90-minute cap does for anyone with a full Saved folder. Instagram Features is a good reason to save longer videos and, for now, no reason to expect to find anything inside them.
Facts checked on 2 November 2026 against reporting from 26 and 27 October 2026. Instagram is still describing Features as a test; we will update this guide as the format and its availability change.
Keep reading
Instagram Reels search by spoken words (2026)
Instagram Reels search by spoken words is still not native, even with Instagram's new Saved search. Four workarounds that find a Reel by what was said.
Search inside saved videos by what was said (2026 guide)
How to search inside saved YouTube videos, Reels and TikToks by what was said: why the apps can't, how transcript search works, and four tools that do it.
Search YouTube Watch Later and liked videos (2026)
Search YouTube Watch Later and liked videos by keyword: what the native playlist search actually matches, the watch history route, extensions, and transcript search.
Frequently asked questions (2026)
What are Instagram Features?
Features is Instagram's long-form video format: horizontal videos up to 90 minutes long, announced on 26 October 2026 by Adam Mosseri and Tessa Lyons. It is aimed at podcasters and creators with long material, and viewers reach a long video through a short clip of it rather than seeing it at full length in the feed.
How long can an Instagram Features video be?
Up to 90 minutes. For comparison, Reels run to a few minutes at most, and the median saved Instagram video in the SavedThat corpus is 53 seconds as of November 2026. The 90-minute cap is roughly 100 times that.
Is Instagram Features available in my country?
Probably not yet. Instagram tested long video with creators in Brazil, then opened a test to selected creators in the United States, which is expanding toward all US users by the end of 2026 or early 2027. No other country has been named and no dates have been given, and there is no UK, EU, Canadian or Australian release.
Are Instagram Features horizontal or vertical?
Horizontal, which is the point of the format. Reels stay vertical. The widescreen shape is also why Instagram keeps mentioning its television app alongside Features, although whether Features reaches that app at launch or later has been reported both ways.
Can you search inside a 90-minute Instagram video?
Not in Instagram. Saved collections filter by collection and have no search box for a phrase from the audio, and Instagram has documented no transcript or chapter feature for Features. To search what was said, either find the same episode on a platform with a transcript panel, or use a transcript search tool on the videos you save.
Do Instagram Features replace Reels?
No. Tessa Lyons said Reels is still going to be a core part of Instagram, and Adam Mosseri described short and long form as needing to be symbiotic. Short clips are also the main way viewers will discover a long video, so the two formats depend on each other.
Will creators get paid for Instagram Features?
Nothing is settled. A Meta spokesperson said it is too early to share a long-term monetization model, and Meta has not said whether ads will run in long videos. Existing brand deals carry over, and Instagram has mentioned exploring earnings from brands, fans and the platform itself, including performance-based incentives.