The Instagram iPad App Is Lastly Right here

Apple debuted the iconic and now wildly in style iPad in 2010. A couple of months later, Instagram landed on the App Store to fast success. But for 15 years, Instagram hasn’t bothered to optimize its app structure for the iPad’s bigger display screen.

That’s lastly altering at present: There’s now a devoted Instagram iPad app obtainable globally on the App Store.

It has been a very long time coming. Even earlier than Apple started splitting its cellular working system from iOS into iOS and iPadOS, numerous apps adopted a recent person interface that embraced the bigger display screen measurement of the pill. This was the iPad’s calling card on the time, and people native apps optimized for its exact display screen measurement are what made Apple’s machine stand out from a sea of Android tablets that largely ran cellphone apps inelegantly blown as much as match the larger display screen.

Except Instagram by no means went iPad-native. Open the prevailing app proper now, and you may see the identical cellphone app stretched to the iPad’s display screen measurement, with awkward gaps on the perimeters. And you may run into the occasional issues once you submit pictures from the iPad, like low-resolution pictures. Weirdly, Instagram did introduce layout improvements for folding telephones a couple of years in the past, which suggests the expertise is healthier optimized on Android tablets at present than it’s on iPad.

Instagram’s chief, Adam Mosseri, has long offered excuses, typically citing a lack of resources regardless of being part of Meta, a multibillion-dollar firm. Instagram wasn’t the one offender—Meta promised a WhatsApp iPad app in 2023 and solely delivered it earlier this yr. (WhatsApp made its debut on telephones in 2009.)

The recent iPad app (which runs on iPadOS 15.1 or later) presents greater than only a facelift. Yes, the Instagram app now takes up your complete display screen, however the firm says customers will drop straight into Reels, the short-form video platform it launched 5 years in the past to compete with TikTok. The Stories module stays on the prime, and you can hop into totally different tabs by way of the menu icons on the left. There’s a brand new Following tab (the folks icon proper beneath the house icon), and it is a devoted part to see the most recent posts from folks you truly comply with.