Instagram will soon allow users to post photos in 9:16 format to the platform as part of a test it plans to run, allegedly in “a week or two”. This news first came from Adam Mosseri’s weekly Q&A. “You can have long-form videos, but you can’t have long-form photos on Instagram,” the manager said. “So we think maybe we need to make sure we treat both equally.”
While it’s already possible to share 9:16 photos on Instagram, you have to do it through the app’s Stories feature. So unless you save these images as Highlights, they disappear. Currently, vertical photos you upload to your stream can have a maximum ratio of 8:10 as long as you crop them correctly.
In terms of timing, this test comes after Mosseri recently announced that Instagram will be withdrawing its unpopular full-screen interface. The company had been testing the redesign since mid-June, but it turned out that most people didn’t like it. “People are frustrated with new streaming designs and usage data isn’t great,” Mosseri told Platformer last week.
Among those most critical of the redesign were photographers, who noted that the new interface overlays captions on their images, hiding some of their work in the process. Instagram’s latest testing shows that the company still intends to switch to a more TikTok-like experience.
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