Instagram is refining its Map feature to make location-sharing settings clearer and reduce the confusion that surrounded its rollout earlier this year. The platform announced that users will now see a more visible indicator at the top of the Map showing whether their location is being shared, along with a reminder when device location is turned off. A smaller indicator will also appear under users’ profile photos in the Notes tray within direct messages, confirming when their location isn’t being shared.
The update comes two months after the feature’s debut in the U.S. and Canada, which prompted a wave of misinformation online. Many users mistakenly believed Instagram was automatically sharing their real-time location, leading to viral warnings advising people to disable the feature. At the time, Instagram head Adam Mosseri clarified that location sharing is entirely opt-in and only visible to others when users actively choose to share it.
Now, Instagram is expanding the Map to India and adding clearer visual cues to help users understand how it works. To further reduce confusion, the company has also removed profile photos from Map content, which previously led some users to assume those icons indicated live tracking. In reality, the Map simply aggregates posts tagged with a location, showing where users have shared content rather than where they are in real time.
Instagram is also introducing an educational prompt to explain that adding a location tag to a story, Reel, or post will make that content appear on the Map — a behavior that has existed since launch but wasn’t always communicated clearly. To improve transparency, users will now see a preview of how their tagged content will look before publishing it.
The Map feature is intended to make local discovery and social coordination easier, similar to Snapchat’s Snap Map. Users can explore nearby content or see posts tied to specific locations, even if they choose not to share their own whereabouts. The goal, according to Instagram, is to help users “coordinate hangouts and explore location-based posts” without compromising privacy.
Still, the feature’s debut illustrates how sensitive users have become to location tracking across social platforms. Instagram’s decision to make visibility settings more explicit suggests the company is aware of that skepticism — and wants to avoid the backlash that comes with even the perception of hidden data collection.
