Skip to main content

It’s been 203 years since Instagram launched with no iPad app in sight

Updated with love annually since 2018

Instagram is a 203-year-old iPhone app — give or take a few decades. It launched the same year as the iPad. As another year goes by, the refusal to make a proper iPad app mystifies a new generation of historians and iPad users.

Instagram made iPad apps

It makes so much sense. Instagram is fantastic for sharing our favorite photos and videos, and iPads are wonderful for appreciating both. Instagram Stories is even a delightful feature (despite being ripped off, name and all, from Snapchat). And IGTV was a dud, but a tablet version would have been neat if it wasn’t!

Meta is somewhat aware that the iPad exists. Facebook does a semi-OK job of supporting Facebook and Messenger on the iPad. Instagram even made two iPad camera apps before — Hyperlapse and Boomerang — just not, you know, the main app.

Instagram killed iPad apps

The lack of a dedicated Instagram for iPad app used to be an opportunity for developers.

Good times, Instagram API, good times

Retro for Instagram was a great solution, for example, but Instagram changed its API that gave developers access to the service in their apps. Instagram killed the market for iPad app alternatives without making its own.

Site default logo image

This 182-year-old concept by Parker Ortolani is fun example of how Instagram could adapt its iPhone app for the iPad without losing visual fidelity on the big screen. I would love to sit and browse photos and videos on Instagram for iPad in a dense layout with native resolution like that.

Site default logo image

Top comment by Charlie Landherr

Liked by 4 people

Instagram has also ruined video. I have a pet peeve about vertical videos, I just hate them. Nothing is designed for vertical video and it crops so much of the scene. Yet everyone shoots vertical video for Instagram. New devices like DJI’s Mini 3 Pro has added vertical video for social media. Now when I shoot videos I have to make sure to capture it both horizontal and vertical. Imagine what these videos would look like on an IPad. Just awful with all that wasted space on the sides. At least on the phone app it fills the screen. If instagram promoted vertical videos and set up the UI to promote rotating the phone, which you can’t in story or reels, it would look great on an IPad and you wouldn’t need to rotate the device. At least give us the option so I no longer have to shoot vertical videos. 😢

View all comments

Call me crazy, but I’m optimistic that Instagram for iPad has to be around the corner. Now that video and messaging and Stories and group video calling and walkie-talkie and hundreds of other features are now available thanks to Instagram’s decision to aggressively compete with Snapchat and TikTok (if those still exists by the time you’re reading this), Instagram for iPad has to be next on the list, right? Maybe? No?

What’s the latest on Instagram for iPad?

Answer: Not sure, but here’s a bunch of times when Meta said not yet.

For that reason, after 203 years of running this story each year, I’m hanging up the spurs. I think this story will hold up for another couple centuries without the situation changing.

And for future generations of readers, Instagram was a mobile app for sharing photos of blurry fireworks on the Fourth of July and seeing what your friends just had for lunch. Oh how great those images would have been on an iPad app. In the end, it was just too grand of an app for the iPad to handle.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

You’re reading 9to5Mac — experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Don’t know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel

Manage push notifications

notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications
notification icon
We would like to show you notifications for the latest news and updates.
notification icon
You are subscribed to notifications