Instagram Posting on Desktop is HERE

Yes, after alllll these years, and endless requests from pretty much every social media manager on the planet, Instagram has FINALLY released the ability to upload natively to Instagram via the desktop. No 3rd party tools. No (shitty) Creator Studio. No workarounds. Just good old fashioned native posting to Instagram.

Oh, and for the record, it’s soooo freaking easy. Like, Instagram actually made something easy and intuitive to use without buggering up the whole thing  lol

So, how do you do it?

Go to your profile on Instagram.com and click on the + sign in the upper row of icons. If you have access to posting (rolling out globally now), you’ll see this screen to add a post:

From there, drag and drop your photo or video (up to 1 minute in length) or click “Select from computer” to choose your file.

Your photo or video will fill the screen:

You’ll notice in the bottom of the screen, you have the option to change the orientation (the double arrow on the left) for both videos and photos. You can change from square to landscape to vertical.

And in the lower right corner is the icon option to create a carousel post and upload additional images or videos. Plus, you can reorder the posts within the carousel into the order you prefer.

Once uploaded, click “Next” in the upper right corner to get to the editing screen. Add filters, crop the video, select the video thumbnail, etc.

Again, click “Next” in upper left when you’re all set with your edits. You’ll get to the caption screen to add your caption and add other tags – location and account tags. There’s also the option to add your alt text under the Accessibility section or turn off commenting under Advanced Settings. When you’re typing your caption, you’ll see the counter in the bottom of the caption box keep track of your character count so you know when you’ll run out of characters. You can also click the emoji button (smiley face) to add emojis to your text.

When you’re all done, click “Share” in the upper right corner, and boom! You’re done. It’s honestly that easy!

Yes, it’s that easy, and yes, I love it!

BUT….

I’m used to using Agorapulse to schedule or post immediately to Instagram. For as easy as this is on Instagram.com, I’m not sure I’m fully ready to forego my love of Agorapulse. I am super reliant on the hashtag tool on Agorapulse that lets me save and easily populate all my hashtags. This way I don’t have to remember them and manually type them in. Using the desktop browser for Instagram.com means manually typing in hashtags – having to remember them all and hope I don’t make typos.

And this feature for native posting on Instagram.com is great, but it doesn’t allow for scheduling. Who knows if we’ll get that in the future or not.

But yes, this roll out is much desired and I know marketers are jumping for joy that this is rolling out now! I’ll admit, I’m right there with them that this functionality is finally available.