The iPad was launched on April 3, 2010. Instagram launched a few months later on October 6, 2010. And yet only now has an iPad app launched.
A very real “WTF” moment has arrived, and Instagram may be to blame: the social network finally has an app… on iPad. It’s only taken fifteen years.
It’s been on iPhone since the beginning, and on Android, too. You’ve even been able to access Instagram on the web via a browser if you wanted, but iPad owners were condemned to use the cursed iPhone version made to be bigger on their screen if they wanted to share and browse that social network.
Not so anymore. All it took was 15 years.
The addition this week of Instagram for iPad needs iPadOS 15.1, so should handle most iPads made and released in the past four or five years, including the 11 inch iPad Air and larger iPad Pro, and it’s not just a supersized version of its iPhone sibling. Sure, it is to an extent, but Meta and Instagram have gone in a little deeper.
The app now supports multitasking and windowing in iPadOS 26, just like other apps do, meaning when iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 roll out in a matter of days, you’ll be able to run Instagram in a window on top of other apps.
It’ll run in portrait and landscape, and supports the keyboard, making typing descriptions just that little bit easier than using your phone’s on-screen keyboard. And for folks who watch the reels, comments stay on the side while you watch the video in a larger space.
The look isn’t dramatically different from how Instagram looks on an Android foldable, like the Galaxy Fold 7, but there’s just more space overall, meaning you can see more of what your friends and folks you follow upload, because cameras clearly have changed a lot in fifteen years.
For folks already using the oversized iPhone app on their iPad, the other bit of good news is the new app has replaced their older one, so the moment you go in, it almost seems like all has been forgiven. And for those who haven’t, Instagram for iPad is available now on the App Store for free.
