Based on some details leaked today, Instagram may be working on one of its most requested features: The ability to make posts from your desktop’s browser. The new feature is being tested internally and likely under active development, but there are a handful of images showing what it currently looks like in action.
While most folks that use Instagram for entertainment probably aren’t perturbed by different platform limitations, it’s another story if you use it for work. The only way to create a post right now is either via the app or through a convoluted workaround by loading the mobile site in a browser that lets you force it to appear, like Chrome. But if today’s news pans out, that may not be an issue forever.
Details were dug up by Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a), an Italian developer and leaker with a very good record of digging up features like these as they’re being worked on across various apps and services. He also managed to pull a handful of images showing what the feature looks like in action.
Details may yet change before the feature is revealed to the world — if it ever is, nothing’s official yet— but you can clearly see what the post-creation workflow would be. A familiar-looking new button on the bar at the top of the desktop view (the same a plus icon inside a rounded box you get on the Instagram app and mobile site) appears to be the New Post trigger, opening a post-creation dialog with support for drag-and-drop to add images or videos and an editor with support for cropping and filters. In short: It’s all pretty close to the app workflow.
You can add a caption, location, or alt text and tag people in the image. The Advanced Settings dialog shown also implies you’ll have similar options to disable comments or configure branded settings, etc.
According to Paluzzi, the feature is currently being tested internally, and we don’t yet have any timetable or expectations for when it might be publicly available, if it ever is. Sometimes features spotted in development like this never manifest. However, given how often folks that use Instagram for work have asked for the ability to make posts from their desktops/laptops, I don’t expect this feature will be abandoned, and folks won’t have to use the mobile site workaround.