After years of concentrating entirely on its mobile product, Instagram users have been thinking long and hard about posting from their computers. Several Twitter users have reported that the test feature went live on Thursday, and Instagram has confirmed the test to TechCrunch. An Instagram spokesperson said, “We know that a lot of people access Instagram from their computers.” “To improve that experience, we’re now testing the ability to create a feed post on Instagram with their desktop browser.”
Why now? Apparently since the end of the epidemic, the company has seen an increase in the number of people traveling from computers to Instagram rather than their phones. To see if the test is live for you, go to Instagram in your browser and look for a new “plus” icon in the icon tray at the top right. Testing is not available to everyone and it only allows users to create posts for the main feed.
The new experimental feature is the latest sign of the company’s life for its desktop products: Instagram added the ability to view stories on the web in 2017 and added direct messages to the desktop late last year. “We haven’t found any evidence that the Instagram desktop web experience can disrupt engagement from native applications,” an Instagram data scientist observed with the launch of the web message.
“We found no evidence that the Instagram desktop web experience could disrupt engagement from native applications,” an Instagram data scientist observed with the introduction of the web message. Instagram is trying to make sure everyone has access to the story feature. The company has now started adding their stories from the web to anyone who is on mobile.
The feature is pretty basic right now: you can just add photos and put some text on top of it. Many more fun features of Instagram – such as face filters, stickers and various post types are not available. So you still can’t make videos, and you can’t post from the desktop, which is a pretty big limitation.
