How to use Facebook Year Together, Instagram Playback features to recap biggest moments of 2021

Instagram, Facebook 2021 recap features: If you have been on social media over the past week, you would know that Spotify’s 2021 Wrapped feature was the talk of the town, with people not only sharing their Spotify Wrapped summaries for the year, but also memes made on the same template. Now, it seems that Meta has taken a leaf from Spotify’s book and created recap features for both Instagram and Facebook.

The feature is called Playback on Instagram and it gives the users a recap of their best stories of 2021. Meanwhile, the feature that has been rolled out on Facebook is called the ‘Year Together’ card showing highlights and top moments of 2021.

Instagram 2021 Playback feature

The Playback feature on Instagram offers users their top 10 stories of the year, with the platform suggesting a set of stories. However, it also allows users to change the suggestions by Instagram and select their own set of top stories before sharing the Playback video with their friends. The feature is live now and available to all users. However, Playback would only be live for the next few weeks, considering its purpose.

To make people aware of the feature, Instagram has started showing the Playback 2021 banner on top of users’ feed, and once they have seen it once, the banner disappears, regardless of whether they have shared their playback video or not. Upon clicking on the feature the first time, users are shown some top stories, and then they can click ‘Next’. This will lead to the ‘Story’ template opening up where users would get the option to either share the pre-suggested stories or to remove some or all of them and choose other stories. The feature will save users from having to share each story individually, and would allow them up to 10 stories at once from 2021 that they wish to share.

It must be noted here that stories shared using the Playback option would show up in a special Pink and Orange frame designed by Instagram for this feature.

The Playback feature is only applicable for the ‘Story’ archives of 2021, and no such feature has been announced by Instagram for top posts made during the year. For that, however, there are several third-party tools that can be used.

Facebook Year Together card for 2021

The Year Together card by Facebook is available on the platform’s Android and iOS apps and using it, people can show their top highlights and memories of the year. As part of the card, users would be able to see the photos, friends and locations apart from other experiences. The feature is being rolled out, and it will remain live till the end of the year.

Like Playback, Year Together feature is also going to suggest posts and contents the user posted during the year – to be compiled and shared as a post. But, users do not need to contain themselves to posts that Facebook suggests, and can remove the suggestions, selecting different images or content in its place.

Once the Year Together post has been shared, others would be able to see it based on the user’s setting for who can see the post.