Instagram now supports landscape and portrait modes
Ever since Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched Instagram five years ago, Instagram has favored square-shaped photos.
Not anymore.
In a significant change, the popular photo-sharing app announced native support for landscape and portrait-shaped photos. The update will roll out to all iOS and Android users through the day on Thursday.
Previously, if you wanted to upload a photo or video captured in landscape or portrait mode, you usually had to share a compromised version: a letterboxed version that cropped out part of the shot to fit.
"For the average Instagram user as they're scrolling through their feed, 1 in every 5 moments that they're seeing, essentially feels like it's not natively supported on their platform," Instagram product manager Ashley Yuki told Mashable. "That's something we really want to make better."
To be clear, Instagram is not allowing you to capture photos or videos in landscape or portrait mode using the app, but photos and videos captured by other means are now shared in all their glory. Horizontal and vertical pics will appear in your feed without the telltale white space that shows you imported the pic from a separate app.
And if you still want to crop those photos and videos in any way, Instagram is making that process slightly easier, too. To that end, a small new toggle button will now appear on the lower left-hand side of the screen in the Library section.
Tapping it automatically resizes your media to the app's square-friendly format. Users can also double-tap the image, as well as pinch-to-zoom to their liking.
By allowing native support for landscape and portrait photos, Instagram is appeasing many of its users who want a little more flexibility around the kinds of photos and videos they can share on the fast-growing social network. But by not allowing them to capture media in those formats from within the app, Instagram is also sending out a clear message that square photos and videos still rule. At least for the time being.