Instagram’s Official iPad App Is Finally Here
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It’s no secret that the power-that-be at Meta aren’t big fans of Apple’s iPad. While the company has been relatively quick to embrace the iPhone with everything from Facebook and Instagram to WhatsApp and Threads, few have come to Apple’s tablets with nearly the same speed.
The exception that arguably proves the rule is Facebook’s Messenger app. Although Meta still took its sweet time after the first iPad was released in April 2010, a standalone Messenger app for the iPad appeared in August 2011, ironically, two months before the main Facebook app came to the tablet in October of that same year.
While Meta has refined Messenger over the years to deliver a solid user experience on the iPad, the same can’t be said for the primary Facebook app, which is often a source of user frustration. While technically a native app, Facebook on the iPad feels like a clumsily stretched-out iPhone app, filled with persistent bugs and glitches and missing features.
With that kind of neglect, it was hardly surprising that Meta wasn’t in any hurry to bring WhatsApp, Instagram, or Threads to the tablet. In fact, even as many hoped that these would show up, they also feared that they’d be the same train wreck that Facebook has become.
Fortunately, Meta seems to be learning its lessons and realizing that the iPad is a customer base that’s worth supporting. In fact, 2025 may turn out to be the year that the company finally brings Apple’s tablets into the fold.
In May, WhatsApp finally gained a native iPad app, and this week, Meta is finally giving us the app that Instagram head Adam Mosseri once effectively said would never happen: Instagram for iPad is here.
Mosseri reasoned that there simply wasn’t enough interest to justify building and maintaining a separate, native app. The user group was “just not a big enough group of people to be a priority,” he once said. However, that was in 2022. We must assume that enough has changed since then to make it worthwhile for the company.
Mosseri’s continued downplaying of an Instagram app for the iPad makes this week’s release a significant and surprising reversal of a long-held company position, even if it wasn’t necessarily a fully official one.
Regardless of the reasoning, Instagram has arrived on the iPad, and the company isn’t just quietly pushing it out. It heralded the app’s arrival in a blog post, highlighting the key design features:
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. You’ll also see Stories at the top, so you can easily connect with the people that matter to you, and messaging is one tap away.
The good news is that this isn’t a clumsy port like the Facebook app. Instagram has been crafted specifically for the larger screen, and while there are still some rough edges to be ironed out, it’s definitely a more immersive experience that takes full advantage of iPad design elements. It even supports the menu bar in iPadOS 26.
Sadly, the iPad version of the app may be leaving classic Instagram fans behind. The iPad version leans a lot more heavily into Reels, which some folks are understandably not happy about. Nevertheless, that appears to be a very deliberate decision, as Instagram notes in its blog post:
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.
While there’s a “Following” tab that lets you see a more traditional stream of recommended posts (and reels, of course) from accounts you follow, and lets you filter by friends or sort by most recent, there doesn’t appear to be any way to start on that screen. There also doesn’t appear to be any way to scroll through a public feed of posts, only reels.
In a design choice that makes it even more evident that the emphasis here is on Reels, only that screen provides a two-panel view in landscape mode, allowing you to see comments and reels side by side. That’s a great use of the extra space on that screen, but as soon as you flip over to your Following feed, you’ll be presented with a single column, dead-centre, and comments that open up as a pop-up over whatever you were looking at.
To be fair, these are “version 1.0” rough edges that we certainly hope Instagram will sort out. However, after waiting 15 years, it’s a bit disappointing to see an iPad app that’s such an unusual departure from the iPhone tradition.
Instagram for iPad requires iOS 15.1 or later and is available as a free download from the App Store. Since it’s a universal app for the iPhone and iPad, anyone who was running the iPhone version on their iPad should get this as a free update. Now, we can only hope that Threads gets some iPad love soon.
