The new secrets of Pinterest

Pinterest has been busy lately, rolling out new features designed to improve its organisation – and your inspiration.

The app now offers more ways than ever to browse for style and home decor inspiration and then purchase items that can make it a reality.

Here’s how to make the most out of the app right now.

‣ With the recent updates, it’s never been easier to buy the perfect items under that perfect pin. Here’s how:

Long-press any pin with a purchasable item, then tap the Shop tag in the menu that appears. Pinterest will show you the item’s availability and price, along with links to the retailer’s checkout page.

To explore a little more, scroll down to “Products like this,” where you’ll find similar items from other brands – and, conveniently, at other prices.

If you’re into everything you see under a single pin, Pinterest’s Shop the Look feature lets you buy every item. Look for three white dots that’ll appear across the photo: That’s your signal that the entire look is ready and waiting for you.

‣ With the Lens feature, snap an iPhone photo of any product – cocktail dress, set of cabinets, particular species of cactus – and Pinterest will search for and display similar items. Until the app can actually read minds, search doesn’t get more convenient than this.

‣ Visual Search is like the Lens, except for pictures. Open a pin, tap the frame icon and Pinterest will search for and display similar images (to further refine your results, swipe through the tags that appear at the top of the suggestions list).

Visual Search has a cool extra trick up its sleeve: It lets you crop pictures to zero in on a specific person or object. If you have a picture of a kitchen but are only interested in the blender, simply adjust the frame to crop. Pinterest will respond by showing you enough blenders to make a year’s worth of smoothies.

‣ Pinterest offers lots of ways to interact with pins, but few are easier than this: From the home screen, touch and hold on a pin to Save, Send or Hide it (from the pin itself, you can also Save or Send by touching and holding).

‣ Has your Pinterest gotten too messy to handle? Here are three ways to straighten up your board situation:

The simplest way is to add Sections within a board by tapping the plus sign at the top left of the screen (it’s like adding files to a folder). Use this feature to, say, break down your Weddings board into Dresses, Flowers and Viral Reception Dance Routines.

To reduce the number of boards themselves, try the Merge function: Go to a board, tap the pencil icon and scroll down to Manage (just note that boards you merge will lose their followers).

If you no longer want to see ideas or recommendations based on a board – maybe you’ve discovered you’re terrible at woodworking or your newborn baby is now 9 – you can tap Archive Board to hide it from your profile. Don’t worry, you can unarchive it later.

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