Instagram has just added a brand-new feature to the app that will finally let you layer text and photos in your grid posts, opening up a whole new world of creative possibilities. I’m going to share some photos from a recent trip to London, and to start, I’ll just select a few for the feed as normal. The difference here, though, is that I’m looking for pictures that will work well as a background for my collage—so ones with some empty space or darker areas will be good.

Now that I’ve got those three photos selected, I’m going to add a filter to make them work better as backgrounds. I think something black and white would be good to darken those images a bit and to make my foreground really pop later on. Yes, okay, that one looks good across all three photos.

Now this is where the creative stuff begins, thanks to the new tools Instagram has just released. From here, I can simply tap the Photo button above my post editor and add a new photo. But rather than adding it alongside the other three to my post, it will now drop on top of this photo, just like adding a sticker in your Story. Tapping on this new photo will change its shape, and of course, you can move and resize it on your post just like you’d expect.

I want to add a bit more of the London context to my post, so I’ll use this picture in the bottom corner. I think I’ll add another one to sit just above it by pressing that Photo button at the top again. Now that I’ve got a second picture, I can change its shape again, but I can also overlap them together if I wish. As you can see, at the moment, this new picture is on top of the old one, but I can even change that layer order by tapping and holding, then swiping up or down to change the order of those photos. I think I just want my picture of London Eye to go above the other one on the side of my post here, so I’ll put it in place.

Now, before we add some text, this feels like a really good time to quickly say that my YouTube channel is full of hundreds of short, friendly QuickTip videos just like this one, all designed to help you get the most out of your iPhone. So, if you’d like more videos like this in your feed, please do consider subscribing!

Okay, let’s add some text—again, this is another brand-new feature that Instagram has just added to posts, and to be honest, it’s been a long time coming. So, just like you might do for your Stories, you can press the Text button at the top of your post, and from here, you can add your writing. There are a bunch of cool new fonts available as well alongside this update, so do explore them as you’re using them. I quite like this style, and of course, I can adjust the colour too—I think white looks good alongside the rest of this post.

Okay, you don’t want to see me faffing around for ages, so let’s jump ahead now to my finished post, where you’ll see I’ve added more photo stickers to each of my three main photos. Just like that, I’ve created a really fun, interesting collage without ever having to leave the Instagram app. This is such a creative update to Instagram, and I think our feeds are all going to look very different from now on. And like I said earlier, don’t forget to jump over to my YouTube channel down below and subscribe if you’d like more tips and tricks for your iPhone. There’s a whole bunch of iOS 18 content coming soon. I’ll see you next time!