IG:dm

Instagram has become quite a phenomenon throughout the world. Millions of people are posting photos or videos on the platform daily.

Another one of its features is messaging service. Even though it is more popular for uploading content, people do also chat through Instagram.

If for whatever reason you cannot use your phone, and you're not one of the lucky few who can manage their DMs from the web app, how would you communicate with anyone? If you really need to, you can chat through IG:dm.

Its name actually stands for Instagram: direct message. It is a program that you can use to chat with other people from Instagram. This function is not available to all the users on the website, which makes it the only way some people can chat from their PC.

It is basically a simplified version of the platform, that does not allow you to post or view any content, but only to chat with people.

Once you connect with your Instagram account, you will be able to search for people you want to talk to and receive messages from other people.

Well, not quite. You can chat with people, but it is not quite INSTANT messaging. From what I've experienced with it, the messages take some time to be sent from one person to the other. It is not a lot, but still slower than on the app.

It also has some bugs and glitches here and there. When trying to scroll through a conversation, it will automatically jump to the beginning of it and not let you scroll back down. You will have to click on the slider and drag it down yourself.

Aside from this, the option to send images doesn't seem to work. Whenever I tried to send one, it gave me an error saying that I can only send JPG pictures, even though that was the actual format.

Overall, I would advise you to keep using your phone. If not available, some people can safely rely on the website. At least for the moment, IG:dm will need some improvement in order to be a viable alternative.