After many years, and many user requests, Instagram has finally launched a dedicated iPad version of the app, built for the bigger iPad screen.
As you can see in this example, the new Instagram for iPad app is specifically formatted for the larger screen, enabling full IG functionality on the device.
And it’s not just a ported version of the regular IG app, Instagram has also added a range of iPad-specific functionalities and processes, which it hopes will help iPad users maximize their use of the app in the bigger format.
First off, the IG for iPad app opens to the Reels feed, similar to TikTok.
As explained by Instagram:
“Instagram has always been the place where people connect over creativity, and Reels has become a primary way people discover and share entertaining content. With Instagram for iPad, we’ve redesigned the experience to reflect how people use bigger screens today – for lean back entertainment. Now, when you open the app, you’ll drop into Reels, so you can get the entertaining content you love on a bigger screen.”
So while all the regular functionalities of IG are also available, including Stories along the top if the screen, Reels will be the main focus of the app.
Which makes sense. More and more people are now spending more time watching Reels in the app. Indeed, last month, Meta reported that overall video watch time on IG is up 20% year-over-year, while, in April, it also reported that Reels now make up 50% of all time spent on IG.
So most Instagram users are spending an increasing amount of time watching Reels, and as such, it makes sense for Instagram to at least experiment with opening to a Reels feed as part of this new project.
Instagram’s also added a new “Following” tab in the iPad app, giving you more ways to view content.
While it’s also built new custom UI flows for the larger iPad screen:
“We’ve made it easier to catch up on your messages and notifications with layouts that display both tabs. When you watch reels, you can expand the comments while the reel stays at full size, making it easy to catch up on the best reactions without missing a moment.”
So, custom formatting for what’s essentially a new version of IG, which should make the iPad crowd happy.
And it’ll be interesting to see how opening to Reels is adopted by iPad users, because I suspect, at some stage, Instagram is going to switch to this experience for all versions of the app.
Instagram for iPad is rolling out globally on iPad models that support iPadOS 15.1 and later. IG says that the new tablet design will also be coming to Android devices soon.
