Apple debuted the iconic and now wildly fashionable iPad in 2010. A number of months later, Instagram landed on the App Retailer to speedy success. However for 15 years, Instagram hasn’t bothered to optimize its app structure for the iPad’s bigger display screen.
That is lastly altering at this time: There’s now a devoted Instagram iPad app obtainable globally on the App Retailer.
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 consumer 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 system stand out from a sea of Android tablets that largely ran cellphone apps inelegantly blown as much as match the larger display screen.
Besides Instagram by no means went iPad-native. Open the present app proper now, and you will see the identical cellphone app stretched to the iPad’s display screen measurement, with awkward gaps on the edges. And you will run into the occasional issues while you put up pictures from the iPad, like low-resolution photographs. Weirdly, Instagram did introduce structure enhancements for folding telephones just a few years in the past, which suggests the expertise is best optimized on Android tablets at this time than it’s on iPad.
Instagram’s chief, Adam Mosseri, has lengthy supplied excuses, usually citing an absence of sources 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) provides greater than only a facelift. Sure, 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 Tales module stays on the high, and you’ll hop into completely different tabs by way of the menu icons on the left. There is a new Following tab (the individuals icon proper under the house icon), and it is a devoted part to see the most recent posts from individuals you really comply with.