An official Instagram iPad app is reportedly in the works as Meta is looking to capitalize on the looming TikTok ban in the United States.
The Information reported that Meta is ready to get more aggressive in exploiting the TikTok situation by finally committing to building an official Instagram app for the iPad. Although you can run the iPhone version of Instagram on an iPad in compatibility mode, the experience leaves a lot to be desired, as that’s just a blown-up iPhone app that doesn’t take advantage of the bigger canvas.
According to an Instagram employee familiar with the matter, Meta is now building an official Instagram app for tablets. We welcome the move, even if it’s for all the wrong reasons—Meta has ignored pleas to make a proper Instagram iPad app for more than a decade, and now it suddenly cares about iPad owners?
Instagram launched with an official iPhone app in the App Store back in 2010, the same year Apple debuted the first iPad. Absurdly, here we are in 2025 and Instagram for iPad is still an issue—after almost fifteen years!
Instagram for iPad in the works for real this time?
Meta made up various excuses over the years for the situation, like claiming that it’s not receiving enough feedback to make the app a priority, even suggesting Instagram is meant to be primarily used on phones and saying that its web app, released in 2022, should be more than adequate. Meta’s refusal to cater to iPad fans gave birth to many unofficial Instagram apps for iPad users.
In 2022, YouTuber Marques Brownlee asked Instagram boss Adam Mosseri to explain why there’s no Instagram for iPad yet, to which Mosseri replied that such an app wasn’t the “next best thing to do yet,” saying the company is preoccupied with other projects and simply couldn’t assign any employees to the project.
“We get this one a lot,” Mosseri replied. “It’s still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority. Hoping to get to it at some point, but right now we’re very heads down on other things.”
One of the most capable tech companies on the planet cannot devote resources to make Instagram run on the iPad? I’m sure Apple’s spat with Meta over Apple’s App Tracking Transparency effort has nothing to do with this.
In 2023, Mosseri reiterated his stance, saying: “Not working on it right now. I think it’s a good thing to do at some point. But we have only so many people working at Instagram, so we’ve got to pick the most important things to do to improve Instagram at any given moment. And right now, it’s not quite making the cut.”
Yup, we get this one a lot. It's still just not a big enough group of people to be a priority. Hoping to get to it at some point, but right now we're very heads down on other things.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) February 27, 2022
Instagram luring TikTok creators
Meta has been trying hard to persuade TikTok creators to embrace Instagram, doubling down on those efforts after the Trump administration granted China-owned TikTok a second 75-day extension to comply with a law requiring it to sell its US operation or face a ban in the country, where it has more than 170 million users.
Meta is also working on a new app, called Edits, meant as a replacement for the popular CapCut video-editing app for creators from TikTok owner ByteDance. Moreover, Instagram recently matched TikTok’s video upload length by increasing the length of reels from 90 seconds to three minutes, and made visual changes to the interface to look more like TikTok.