Photo and video sharing platform Instagram will begin testing ultra-tall 9:16 photos “in a week or two.”
CEO Adam Mosseri confirmed the news, he said, “You can have tall videos, but you cannot have tall photos on Instagram. So we thought maybe we should make sure that we treat both equally.”
Currently, Instagram tops out around 4:5 when displaying vertical images that have been cropped accordingly. But introducing support for slimmer, taller 9:16 photos will help them fill the entire screen as you scroll through the app’s feed.
As per ANI, The new feed also added overlay gradients to the bottom of posts so that text would be easier to read. But that clashed with the original appearance of photographers’ work.
During Instagram’s shaky redesign test with users, Mosseri admitted more than once that the full-screen experience was less than ideal for photos. Now Instagram very much still intends to showcase that ultra-tall photo experience, but without mandating it across the board.