Instagram unveiled a slate of new features for its direct messaging experience this week, bringing enhanced functionality and customization options to the popular photo-sharing app’s built-in chat platform. The updates arrive as messaging rivals like WhatsApp, Telegram, and others continue to iterate on their own offerings, evidencing Instagram’s commitment to making its direct messages (DMs) an increasingly compelling proposition.

Headlining the changes is a new message editing capability that allows users to modify the text of sent messages for up to 15 minutes after hitting send. The option brings Instagram’s DMs more in line with messaging heavyweights like Apple‘s iMessage, which has long-supported message editing. To take advantage of the new tool, users simply need to long-press on the message they wish to revise and select the “Edit” option from the menu that appears.

Of course, the ability to tweak sent messages addresses a long-standing source of frustration for many — those embarrassing typos, instances of thinking better of a comment after sending, or cases where additional context is required after first responding. Instagram’s implementation clearly denotes when a message has been edited, so recipients will be aware that what they’re seeing isn’t the original text.

Instagram is also rolling out pinned chats, enabling users to affix their most pertinent conversations to the top of their DM inbox for easy access. The new option supports pinning for both group messages and one-on-one chats, with a maximum of three pinned conversations allowed at any given time. Pinning a chat simply requires swiping left on it and tapping the new pin icon, or long-pressing to bring up the same option.

For those who prefer to maintain a greater degree of privacy, Instagram has baked in granular controls for disabling read receipts — those indicators that alert others when you’ve viewed their messages. The new settings allow users to toggle read receipts off universally across the entire app, or on a case-by-case basis for each individual chat thread.

The update also brings increased opportunities for injecting personal flair into Instagram’s DM experience. A new set of themes is being introduced, providing an array of background color options and designs that can be uniquely applied and swapped between different chat windows.

Users can also now save their favorite stickers and GIFs to a dedicated tray for easier use across future messages.

Instagram’s direct messaging product has evolved considerably since its inception as a bare-bones real-time text chat, steadily gaining features like video calling, encryption, and inline references to feed posts over the years. But despite their forward progress, the DMs have remained somewhat utilitarian compared to the richly customizable environments offered by many of Instagram’s peers.

With this latest round of updates, it’s clear that Instagram is intent on closing that functionality gap and transforming its DMs into a full-fledged messaging service capable of taking on competitors from all angles. By combining new features focused on both utility and personalization, Instagram is aiming to craft an experience versatile enough to serve as the primary messaging solution for its over 1 billion users worldwide.