Here’s a Trick for Posting to Instagram from a Mac or PC
Instagram has always been a mobile-centric social network. Yes, you can view an Instagram feed on a Mac or PC, and you can perform a few limited tasks, such as liking photos and following new accounts. But to upload photos or videos, you’ve had to use a mobile device.
Several options for non-mobile Instagram uploading existed for a while now, ranging from standalone apps to plug-ins for Adobe Lightroom. But many of them are pretty wonky. But now, there’s a painless way. Or at least a fairly painless way.
Instagram has added uploading support to the mobile version of its website—that is, the version that displays when you go to Instagram on a mobile device using the device’s browser rather than the Instagram app. This new capability is just part of a major overhaul of Instagram’s mobile site—an overhaul intended to make Instagram more accessible to regions of the world that have severe bandwidth restrictions, according to TechCrunch.
Here's the trick: by installing a user-agent extension in Chrome, you can trick the mobile version of Instagram into loading on your Mac or PC. Just install the extension, choose an iOS or Android device from its menu, and then go to Instagram.com. Instead of the desktop Instagram site, you’ll see the mobile Instagram site—complete with a button for uploading photos.
The mobile version of Instagram’s site has some limitations compared to the Instagram app. You can’t yet upload videos. There are also no filters or image-editing tools, no location services, and no ability to upload multiple items as a single post.
But otherwise, it works well, and for those times when you want to zap a single image into your gallery, it’s a lot faster than transferring that image to your phone and uploading from there.
How it works. A “user agent” is a kind of digital calling card that web browsers use. It identifies, among other things, what kind of device the browser is running on. When a browser requests a page from a website, the site can check the user agent and deliver an experience appropriate to that device. The tip in this article works because the user agent extension tricks Instagram into thinking it’s talking to a mobile device.
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I work at LinkedIn Learning. I curate the LinkedIn Learning Creative library’s Instagram account and also have one of my own. Here’s a list of LinkedIn Learning courses that cover Instagram.
Fractional CMO & Customer Acquisition Coach / Consultant 🚀 I help B2C & eCommerce businesses scale with the right customer acquisition and marketing strategy.
6yCuzario David
lovely
Artist & Educator
6yIt's amazing that a crappy platform like IG has become so powerful that we write detailed articles listing the steps to get the app to do what users want even though the platform itself doesn't care. It's a shame that Yahoo abandoned Flickr. Flickr web & Flickr mobile are better than Instagram in every way, except for social currency where IG is killing Flickr. Flickr lets you upload from phone or laptop. Unlike IG, Flickr cares about metadata and enables a million projects with it. Billions of dollars, and billions of photo uploads later, we're still going through elaborate rituals just to get a photo from our real cameras to the sacred space of Instagram. Since IG will, apparently, never care about providing a real service, why don't we just view a few less Kim Kardashian photos and go somewhere that will?
Marketing Home Economist ~ Recipe Creator/Food Stylist/Food Photog ~ Social Media Relationship Manager & Chief Culinary Adventurist at Aunt Dee Dee's Kitchen, LLC
6ydoesn't work for me.... no option to select device? checked settings... opens instagram, but no button to add an image... just a screen popped up that said it was added.... what am i missing??
10+ Years of Experience in Marketing Strategy, Alumni Engagement, Community Development, & Small Business
6yI'm so glad you shared this! It's always so embarrassing to be seen constantly on my phone at work, when really I'm posting photos to our organization's Instagram account!