No need to pinch yourself, you’re not dreaming – today Instagram has finally launched its iPad app. Seriously, it’s not April Fools, we promise.
The company notes that “people have asked for this for a while”, which is the understatement of the century, surely. Fret not, however, for it’s “taken the time to design an experience that optimizes your favorite parts of Instagram for a bigger screen”.
It seems like the feed isn’t among “your favorite parts of Instagram”, because it still only shows up in the middle of your tablet. Then again, we have to cut Instagram some slack here as the iPads’ very different aspect ratios compared to the iPhones’ mean it’s tricky to actually fill all of the space.
Naturally, then, the question becomes something along the lines of – if this is it, then why has it taken so long? We’re pretty sure we’ll never find out, unless some Instagram exec later decides to publish a memoir explaining things.
The app will drop you right into Reels when you open it, “so you can get the entertaining content you love on a bigger screen”. Stories will be at the top as you’d expect, and “messaging is one tap away”.
There’s also a new “Following” tab on the iPad, which has three options for what it shows you – All (recommended posts and reels from accounts you follow), Friends (recommended posts and reels from accounts you follow, that follow you back), and Latest (chronological posts and reels from accounts you follow, with the most recent posts appearing at the top).
When watching reels, you can expand the comments while the reel stays at “full size”, which is a rare benefit of the aspect ratio creating a lot of empty space in the app’s UI.
Instagram for iPad is now rolling out globally on iPadOS 15.1 and later. The new tablet design is coming soon to Android.