Instagram Announces Halloween-Themed Activations

Instagram has announced some spooky features for Halloween, including keyword-triggered animations in DMs, Stories templates, a Halloween font, and more.

First off, Instagram’s added some “secret” Halloween-themed keywords in DMs and Notes which will activate effects and animations.

As you can see in the first image here, using specific keywords in your DMs will trigger animations like bats flying across the screen.

A few of the “secret” keywords (don’t tell anyone) are “Halloween”, “Happy Hallowen”, and “Trick-or-treat”, while Halloween-themed emojis will also prompt these animations.

The second image here shows the new Halloween chat theme for DMs and broadcast channels, another way to spookify your chats. Though you can also use Meta’s AI tools to generate any other background of your choosing.

Instagram’s also adding 5 custom “Add Yours” templates to prompt Stories interaction for the event.

With these, you’ll be able to prompt your Stories viewers to share Halloween-themed images, or answer themed questions, among other options.

The new templates will be available in the “Happy Halloween” section of the new “Add Yours Templates” Discovery Surface in Stories.

Instagram’s also adding a new “Halloween” font, as well as a text effect:

While Meta also notes that users can generate Halloween-themed images and content via Meta AI.

If you want. Personally, I still struggle to understand why regular users would want to post AI-generated images to their social media profiles, as they’re not reflective of a personal experience or creation. But Meta’s very keen for people to use its latest AI tools. So there’s that.

These are some fun activations, that will no doubt help users get into the Halloween spirit, while brands can also make use of these fonts and features to dress up their Halloween posts and communications.

The new Halloween features will be available from today.