Instagram for iPad
After years of dismissing the idea, Instagram has finally launched an app for the iPad. The company says it had to redesign the experience for larger screens to reflect how people use them today — “for lean-back entertainment.” As a result, you’ll drop straight into Reels as soon as you open Instagram on your iPad. You’ll still see Stories at the top and have the ability to message friends, just like on the phone app.
“Instagram has always been the place where people connect over creativity, and Reels has become a primary way people discover and share entertaining content,” says the announcement post. It adds, “We’ve heard your requests for easier ways to make sure you’re not missing updates from your favorite accounts, so we’re introducing a new ‘Following’ tab on iPad.” This tab offers multiple ways to view posts from the accounts you follow:
- All: Recommended posts and reels from accounts you follow
- Friends: Recommended posts and reels from accounts you follow who also follow you back
- Latest: Chronological posts and reels from accounts you follow, with the most recent appearing first
Instagram for iPad
Instagram says you can choose the order of these feeds to prioritize what you want to see first. Still, we’ll see how that plays out, given the mobile app’s algorithm-driven feed often makes it hard to view every post from the accounts you follow.
“When designing Instagram for iPad, we wanted to take advantage of the bigger screen to give people more features with fewer taps,” the company says. To make the most of that space, Instagram for iPad lets you watch reels and expand the comments while keeping the reel full size.
It’ll be interesting to see how this experience holds up across the iPad lineup, which features different aspect ratios. I’ll download and test Instagram on my iPad after IFA 2025, and report back on how it fares.
Instagram for iPad is now rolling out globally. It supports iPad models running iPadOS 15.1 and later. You can download it from the Apple App Store. A similar redesign will also roll out to Android tablets soon.
