Instagram today announced that the popular app would begin letting users post photos and videos in both portrait and landscape modes, expanding upon the all-inclusive square format for which the service is well-known. The company notes it discovered that nearly one in five posts aren't in the square format, so today's decision comes from its mission statement of putting each user's "visual story" first and the format second.

instagram update sept

Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.

It turns out that nearly one in five photos or videos people post aren’t in the square format, and we know that it hasn’t been easy to share this type of content on Instagram: friends get cut out of group shots, the subject of your video feels cramped and you can’t capture the Golden Gate Bridge from end to end.

Now, when choosing a photo or video, you can tap the format icon to adjust the orientation to portrait or landscape instead of square. Once you share the photo, the full-sized version of it will appear to all of your followers in feed in a beautiful, natural way.

The company believes that the update makes videos "more cinematic than ever" thanks to widescreen, and that instead of a segregated selection of filters for photos and videos, now all filters can be used on any type of moment. The update is live now and should be rolling out to all Instagram users today. Those who have yet to download Instagram [Direct Link] from the App Store can do so for free.

Top Rated Comments

DeathBecomesMe Avatar
127 months ago
Crap. And I had so many widescreen shots of my lunch and nails too
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Art0fLife Avatar
127 months ago
Yada yada yada... Proper iPad support? Or if you'll not develop that, allow devs who will properly develop for it to create apps that let us post from iPad.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
576316 Avatar
127 months ago
This is awesome! The only reason I don't post much of my work outside of Flickr is because Instagram forced me to crop everything to a square. Now I can put what I like on Instagram! A great move, in my opinion. Cameras don't shoot in square format and photos only sometimes crop well to a square.

Ps. I wish Instagram would stop with the compression. Photos look significantly lower res when displayed on Instagram.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Mizouse Avatar
127 months ago
Please please please remove support for portrait oriented videos please...
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dearfriendx Avatar
127 months ago
Now you can fit it even a drink with your lunch!
Follow better accounts *thumbs up*
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Oblivious.Robot Avatar
127 months ago
Finally! I used to hate cropping photos from my dslr into a square.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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