How to use Instagram on your PC

In this blog post, we will decode using Instagram on your Desktop/PC/Laptop/Mac or whatever you wanna call it.

Instagram is a Social Media Platform, which now has a daily 1 billion active users. It is a platform like every other social media platform.

Recommended: Social Media Marketing Trends

Let’s first take a quick dive into Instagram for the 1 or 2 people who might not know it.

What makes Instagram different than other platforms is that it highly encourages photo sharing. This USP of Instagram makes it so much beneficial for photographers & brands that showcase their value proposition with pictorial representation.

Instagram burned the bridges when it introduced the story feature. The story feature was actually conceptualized by Snapchat, but Instagram recklessly paralyzed Snapchat by replicating this feature on the platform.

Now let’s get right into it.

Why the question arises?

First, it’s imperative to understand why to use Instagram on your PC.

That’s because Instagram is a very restrictive platform. It is tailored more towards being used majorly on a smartphone application. Be it, Android, iOS, Windows or other.

The user-friendliness on PC is significantly less as opposed to the smartphone application.

Check out the ultimate Instagram Marketing guide by HubSpot

Here is how you use Instagram on your PC

We will decode the functionality that we can use over PC

1. For viewing & interacting with content

Go to ⏩ Instagram.com. You can use Instagram over PC & use it easily for viewing content, Liking & commenting over it. You can also view Instagram stories.

If you view Instagram stories by your PC, the platform will still try and take you to a full-screen experience. However, the dimensions would become a hindrance.

To exit the store mode you can either press ESC or click on the X

2. Uploading content on Instagram using PC

uploading content on Instagram using a PC is somewhat tricky.

As you can see in the image above there is no option for uploading content. The uploading content icon as can be seen on a Smartphone is a “+” button. But it’s missing here, which means you can only view & interact with the content.

Is that it?

heck no, there’s a way! 😈

You have to open Instagram on your PC in the smartphone view using the inspect tool. Just press ⏩ ctrl+shift+I to open inspect tool & click on the mobile-mode button & refresh the page

After you refresh the page, end the inspect mode by clicking on the x in the right.

As you can see on the above snap, now you have entered Instagram Mobile-Mode on your PC. Now you have “+” icon using which now you can upload content. Image + Video.

Why would you need to use Instagram on your PC

Obviously, this question pops into the mind. Seems like a lot of hassle to go through.

Why not just do it the old-fashioned way using the smartphones? 🤔

Let’s assume you’re a professional photographer who takes 100’s of photos, each photo is heavy in size consuming more disc size.

With that in mind, it would be tedious to first upload the whole thing on a smartphone using a USB-C Cable (assuming your smartphone features a Type C port) then to have that kind of disc space on your smartphone is something of a challenge.

The smartphones might have been upgraded & has a disc space of 128 GB or so. But just about any laptop these days comes with a minimum disc space of 1 TB.

Once the photographer transfers the photos to the laptop then he plugs out the unnecessary shots. Then he processes the selected photos over photo-editing tools like Adobe Photoshop.

Hence a Professional Photographer would always prefer uploading content on Instagram using PC.

Now let’s assume that you’re a Content Marketer. Your responsibility is to create social media graphics, tons of it as you have tons of clients. Wouldn’t it be less tedious if you can post to Instagram from PC?

Because on your PC you have categorized content in the folders according to client, time & date. Besides you never see an advertising agency where desktops are replaced with smartphones.