Users Say Instagram Handles Won't Autofill

While Instagram has been launching plenty of fun new features, many users have been having issues with one of its key functions: Searching for handles on the app. Users have reported that Instagram handles aren’t coming up automatically when they want to tag friends or search for their handles. Usually the social media app would just auto-complete the search after a few letters have been typed out. Now, users who have updated the app say that typing part of the handle doesn’t work and they have to search for the entire handle before tagging their followers on something. Romper reached out to Instagram for comment on the autofill issue with handles and is awaiting a response.

There was a similar issue back in May when users reported that there was a problem with the autofill feature with hashtags, which also happened after an update hit the app. Hopefully it turns out to be just a glitch that can be fixed quickly for users and easily for the app's developers.

Meanwhile, the issue has been time-consuming and annoying for users as the autofill feature would normally makes it easy to search a hashtag or someone’s handle, especially if you haven’t memorized someone’s handle or if the handle has a bunch of characters in it.

"Tagging people and hashtags on posts no longer works… It used to pop up as you were typing - like tagging @johndoe, you'd type @j and get a list of users you are following or already active on the post, same with hashtags," one user wrote on Reddit three months ago. Another user responded to the post to just a day ago, saying that they are having the same issue.

Many people are taking to Twitter to address the issue to Instagram:

And some users seem to be really upset about the issue:

At the moment, Instagram doesn't list this autofill problem as a "known issue," which are problems like adding stickers to a post or streaming a live video. So, if users are experiencing this issue or any problem with the app, Instagram recommends you first restart your phone or tablet. If that doesn't work, try deleting and reinstalling Instagram. And if all of those still don't fix the problem, then it looks like the app may need to try and solve the bug.

While these autofill issues certainly haven't affected all 500 million active Instagram users who use the app every month, enough people have reported this problem recently to issue some kind of action on the app's part. It's not life or death, of course, but the tech-world is all about moving forward and developing ways to make things faster and easier for users and Instagram is one of the most used social media apps used worldwide. So, hopefully this feature will be restored soon so users can continue to use the app with ease.