Instagram Stories come to the web with this Chrome extension

Photo-sharing social network Instagram took a big swipe at rival Snapchat earlier this month with the launch of Instagram Stories. But whether or not you feel like it's a cheap copy or it one-ups Snapchat's version, the feature is turning out to be very popular among users. The only draw-back at this point is that Instagram Stories can only be viewed in the mobile apps, and not on the desktop via browser.

Fortunately, there's a new Chrome extension that fixes the issue. Called "Chrome IG Story," the extension makes it easy to see Stories posts while browsing the web version of Instagram in a browser. Well, as long as your browser is Google's Chrome, that is.

Stories will appear at the top of the feed on the website, just like in the Instagram app. From there, just click on a profile picture to bring up that person's Story. The arrow keys are used to skip forward and back, ESC will exit the gallery, and the number in the top-left indicated how many posts make up that Story. Users can also right-click on a profile image to download the Story, a feature that should remind people that anything they post online can be saved in one way or another.

Instagram hasn't been very accepting of third-party apps and services that use its API to read feeds for some time now, so make use of the Chrome IG Story extension while it's still available. There's no word from Instagram about if or when it plans to make Stories natively viewable on the web, but hopefully this unofficial method will act as motivation.

SOURCE Chrome Store