I'm a social media whore. Name a SNS and I probably have it. But the one I use the most would probably be Instagram. I love scrolling endlessly on my explore feed and looking at photos and videos of, what else, food! Aside from the mindless scrolling, I also love going through my friends' IG stories because that's like the raw, unfiltered version of themselves and it's just way more fun than looking at someone else's feed. And minor detail, watching your friends' IG stories is also fun on Sunday mornings, when you're hungover and also watching how your friends got hammered on a Saturday night, haha. I love Sunday morning IG stories!
Anyway, the reason why I kept talking so much about IG stories is so I can segue into today's topic which would be my top 5 apps for IG stories! I know that you guys already use a lot, but creating this for everyone who keeps asking me what app/s I use, hehe. Let's begin!
1. VSCO
While I love the freedom you get from posting just about anything on IG stories, I also use it as my test platform when I'm experimenting on certain presets. You see, I ~maintain~ a color scheme for my main Instagram feed but there are times that I want to use a different filter than the one that's posted so this is where VSCO comes in. I also love experimenting with colors most, if not all photos on my IG stories go through this app.
2. UNFOLD
My first ever IG story template was Unfold. I loved how their simple templates were able to level up my IG stories. I started personalizing my templates with different colors and templates. Unfold has a lot of great, classy templates but some of them are paid. You don't have to spend because you can be as create as you want but admittedly I bought the ripple set (lol) because I'm not as creative as some people and I just had to have a template to go on.
3. STORYART
One of the things I was looking for in Unfold was the presence of elements in certain templates. I mean yes they're classy but sometimes when I upload a neutral photo it looks monotonous. That's when StoryArt comes in. It works just likes Unfold, also support photos and videos but it has more colorful templates! From minimalist ones to overly flamboyant designs. What I don't like about StoryArt is their fonts so what I do is just remove it and use IG's native fonts.
4. STORYLUXE
I love doing film edits on my photos. The grungy, old, gritty type of photo and video editing gets me going. I love using Storyluxe because of its native film frames and templates. I also love how when you load a video into one of their templates, it's not as slow and heavy as other apps. It also expoert directly to Instagram.
5. INSHOT
And last but not the least, InShot! This is the only video editing app I keep. You can trim, you can add music, you can change the background and size of your video, you can put filters and stickers, you can pretty much do everything to your videos in this app. This is also where I edit most of my Youtube trailers! I especially love their gradient backgrounds.
So that's it! I know it's a lot especially if you're the type who uploads pretty much anything out of your native camera. But just in case you'd like to up your IG stories games, aside from Instagram's natives fonts and filters, you may also want to try these free apps. Hope this was helpful. Happy story-ing!
Ochi is a twenty-something Corporate Trainer who loves to cook, take photos and videos of her food, eat and travel. On weekends, she's either drunk or snuggling in bed watching her favorite crime drama. 
