In April, we saw a report from The Information‘s Kaya Yurieff and Kalley Huang that said Meta was finally working on an iPad version of its Instagram app. The app currently is only available for the iPhone, altough it will run on the iPad without using the iPad’s full screen.
Now, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman has corroborated the report in his Power On newsletter over the weekend.
Gurman said that Meta employees are “actively testing” the Instagram app for the iPad, and he expects the app to be released this year, barring any showstopping bugs.
iPad users have clamored for a version of Instagram for their tablets, ever since the social network first launched in 2010, but they have been forced to use the iPhone app on their iPads, which is not optimized for the iPad’s larger screen. However, Instagram has not shown the desire to develop an iPad app. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in 2022 that there were no plans for an iPad app because there is “not a big enough group of people” calling for it to make it a priority. In 2020, he blamed the lack of an iPad app on the limited number of employees working for the network, all of who had “lots to do,” and an iPad app was not the “next best thing to do yet.”
While Meta has long-offered an iPad version of its Facebook app, but that’s where the developer’s efforts ended. The company has finally decided to change its tune when it comes to native iPad apps, as the company released a WhatsApp app for the iPad last week, and now multiple sources agree that an iPad version of the Instagram app is on its way.
Once Meta does release Instagram for the iPad, it will leave Threads as the only marquee Meta app as the only one to lack an iPad version.
