New Instagram Icons in 2026: Repost Arrows, the Map Pin, Blend, Trial Badges, and What Older Guides Miss
Most "every Instagram icon explained" guides were written before 2025 and have been quietly wrong since. Instagram shipped a cluster of new features over the last year and a half, each with its own glyph, and the guides never caught up. This is the catch-up.
Each icon below is new or substantially changed since early 2025, with where you'll find it and what it does. For the older, stable set, the full icon reference still holds.
Under Posts and Reels
⇄ Two arrows — Repost The biggest change to the row under a post in years. Sits between Share and Save. Tapping it reposts the content to your own profile's Reposts tab and can surface it to your followers, with the original creator credited. It doesn't expire the way a Story share does. The full comparison with Story sharing explains when to use which; the row of icons under a post covers the rest of its neighbors.
Reposts count in Insights Alongside likes, comments, shares, and saves, your Insights now show how many people reposted a post. New metric, same row.
On Profiles
Reposts tab A new tab next to your grid, Reels, and tagged tabs, marked with the two-arrow icon. It lists everything you've reposted. Visitors can browse it; you can remove items from it.
The 3:4 grid Not an icon, but it changed how every icon on the grid sits. Profile thumbnails are now taller rectangles instead of squares, which moved where the Reel icon, the carousel icon, and the pinned icon appear on each tile, and made cover crops a fresh problem for everyone.
Grid reorder handle When editing your profile, posts can now be dragged into a custom order. The drag handle (six dots or a small grip) appears in edit mode.
In Reels
Friends tab At the top of the Reels feed, a tab showing Reels that people you follow (and who follow you back) liked, commented on, or reposted, with their profile pictures attached. Instagram's version of social proof inside the feed.
Trial badge Visible only to you, on Reels you published as a Trial. Trial Reels go to non-followers only, so you can test a format on strangers without your audience seeing it. If it performs, you can share it to everyone from the same screen. It's the cleanest way to test a new format without risking follower fatigue.
Views as the headline metric The play counter on Reels now says Views and means total plays including loops, not unique viewers.
In DMs
📍 Map pin — Instagram Map At the top of the inbox. Opens a map of location-tagged content from people you follow, and, if you turn it on, lets you share your last active location with specific friends. Location sharing is opt-in and off by default; the icon being there doesn't mean anyone can see where you are.
Blend icon Inside a DM thread, a small icon (often two overlapping circles) that starts a Blend: a shared Reels feed built from what both of you like, updated daily. Group threads can have one too.
Music note in DMs Attach a 30-second music clip to a message.
Pin, translate, and schedule icons Pinning a thread to the top, translating a message in place, and scheduling a message to send later each got their own small icon in the thread menu. The DM icon reference covers the message-status icons those sit beside.
Labels
✦ Sparkle — AI info Appears on posts, Reels, and Stories that Instagram detected or the creator disclosed as AI-generated or AI-edited. Transparency label, not a penalty.
Meta AI loop The infinity-style Meta logo on stickers and backgrounds generated with Meta AI. Easy to confuse with the Boomerang infinity icon; they're unrelated.
"Edited with Edits" Instagram's separate video editing app, Edits, launched in 2025. Reels made with it can carry a small attribution label.
What Actually Changed for Creators
Three of these matter for strategy; the rest are furniture.
- Repost is a new distribution channel. Posts that stand alone get reposted, and reposts don't expire. Design for it.
- Trial Reels remove the cost of testing. Format experiments no longer risk your follower relationship. Use them.
- The Friends tab rewards content people interact with publicly. Likes and comments from mutuals now surface Reels to their friends. Content that gets a comment from a friend of a viewer travels one step further than it used to.
Everything else, the map, Blend, the DM extras, is worth knowing so the icons don't surprise you, and not worth building a plan around.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the new symbols on Instagram?
The most recent additions are the two-arrow Repost icon under posts and Reels, the Reposts tab on profiles, the Map pin in the DM inbox for location sharing, the Blend icon in DMs for shared Reels feeds, the Friends tab in Reels, the Trial badge on Reels shown only to non-followers, and the sparkle AI info label. Older icon guides written before 2025 miss all of these.
What is the two arrows icon on Instagram?
It's Repost. Tapping it shares someone's post or Reel to your profile's Reposts tab and can show it to your followers in their feeds, with the original creator credited. It's permanent until you remove it, unlike sharing to a Story.
What does the map icon in Instagram DMs mean?
It opens Instagram Map, where you can see content tagged with locations and, if you've opted in, share your last active location with selected friends. Location sharing is off by default and only visible to people you choose.
What is the Trial label on an Instagram Reel?
A Trial Reel is one the creator published to non-followers only, as a test. The creator sees a Trial badge on it; followers don't see the Reel at all unless the creator later shares it with everyone. It's a way to test content on new audiences without showing it to existing followers.