Instagram has time and again focused solely on finessing its mobile app. Although other social media platforms had also been thinking about desktop access, the Facebook-owned social media platform had decided to focus on its mobile product. Instagram added the ability to view Stories on the web in 2017 and added direct messaging to desktops late last year. After years of working on it, the famous app has finally started thinking about its desktop access. It has come to notice that the app is working towards granting its users the feature to post from their computers. The new Instagram desktop feature goes live on June 24, 2021.
“We know that many people access Instagram from their computer,” an Instagram spokesperson said, “to improve that experience, we’re now testing the ability to create a Feed post on Instagram with their desktop browser.”
The decision to modify its desktop access did not come as a spur-of-the-moment thing; rather the company found out that during the pandemic, its users preferred to scroll and use Instagram using their desktop rather than staying on the mobile app.
Apparently, not everyone can choose to upload photos using their desktop as of now. In the desktop version of Instagram, there should be a new “plus” icon tray on the top right corner tapping which the user can choose to upload a new post. This new feature is still in its testing phase, which explains why only a number of people have access to the feature.
“… We haven’t found any evidence that the Instagram desktop web experience cannibalizes engagement from the native apps. In fact, it’s quite the opposite – users who use both interfaces spend more time on each interface, compared to users who use each interface exclusively,” a data scientist with Instagram observed with the launch of web messaging.
