Instagram finally lands on iPad, 15 years of its launch

After years of stubborn resistance, Instagram has finally delivered the one thing iPad owners have been begging for, a proper app. Not a stretched-out phone screen, not a half-baked workaround, a fully redesigned, iPad-native Instagram experience. And it’s unapologetically geared towards video.

The new app doesn’t even open with your familiar feed of filtered brunches and dog selfies. Instead, it drops you straight into Reels. Your photo feed hasn’t been exiled though; it just lives a tab away. Stories and DMs are here too, making the iPad app a complete version of Instagram, not a cut-down experiment.

“We’ve taken the time to design an experience that optimises your favourite parts of Instagram for a bigger screen”, Instagram explained in its blog. The layout has been rejigged to make sense on a slab of glass you hold with two hands.

Why now and why video first?

So why has it taken until 2025? In its early days, Instagram obsessed over making photos load quickly on sluggish connections. Images were only as sharp as a small phone screen required, blow them up on an iPad and they turned to mush. That, plus the fact iPads aren’t exactly growth engines for social networks, meant the project sat low on Meta’s to-do list.

But the iPad itself has staged a comeback, with Apple expected to roll out a revamped iPad Pro sometime this year. Instagram, meanwhile, has ballooned to over 2 billion monthly users and fuels around half of Meta’s ad revenue. And with Meta reporting that 50 per cent of all time spent on Instagram is now on Reels, building the iPad experience around video was a no-brainer.

ALSO READ: WhatsApp for iPad is finally here

This launch isn’t happening in isolation either. Meta brought WhatsApp to the iPad back in May, and it’s increasingly clear the company sees bigger screens as prime real estate for deeper engagement.

The Instagram iPad app rolls out this week as a free download. So, will you be using it for binge-watching Reels or simply making your morning scroll less squinty? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.