One of the most popular social networks is Instagram, as it has become a place where users can interact with millions of people through multimedia content such as photos and videos. Well, despite the fact that its app for iPhone is very well developed, to be able to enjoy this social network on the Mac is somewhat more complicated. We tell you everything below.
Ways to use Instagram on Mac
The first thing you need to know is that Instagram, which is a Meta app , does not have a native version that users can download to use on their Apple computer. We will talk about this at length later, since initially we want to focus on you knowing what are the ways you have to be able to use one of the most popular social networks in the best possible way.
There are mainly two ways you can use to be able to see the posts and stories of the people you follow, interact with your followers or simply upload audiovisual content in the form of a photo or video to Instagram. These are the web version of the social network itself or some of the few applications that developers have made.
Use the web version
To begin with, we are going with the web version of the application, and we already told you that this is the most complete way to be able to enjoy an experience that is as close as possible to what users have when using the Instagram app on their iPhone or any other device. another smartphone that is not from the Cupertino company.
Surely aware of the need for users to be able to use this social network on the Mac, its developers have been uploading, over time, the web version with almost all the functions that are present in the version of iOS . And yes, we say almost all of them because the experience it offers is still far from what can be achieved with the smartphone app.
If we focus on the most essential functions of the application, the web version has and offers users the possibility of uploading publications, both in photo and video format, and Instagram will take care of it, if that video exceeds one minute, enter it in the category of “videos” or if it does not reach the minute, publish it as a “reel”. However, one of the great limitations that it has in this sense is that stories cannot be uploaded from the computer itself and, therefore, direct broadcasts cannot be carried out on this platform.
One of the functions that it does present, fortunately, is the possibility of being able to use the chat of the application itself to be able to talk with other users. This way you can answer all the messages that come to you. Going back to the stories, despite the fact that they cannot be created or uploaded from the web service, you will be able to see them very easily and even react to them.
When it comes to interacting with the publications of your followers and the rest of the users, the possibilities, in this case, are the same as those you have in the iPhone app, since you can like, comment, share said publication with others users and even save it in one of your collections. You will also be able to check all the incoming notifications, except those that have to do with the stories that you have uploaded, obviously, from another device that allows you to do so.
Finally, you also have to know that you have all the possibilities to be able to modify your profile within the social network , as well as access to the different settings and configurations that you can make to adapt everything to your uses and needs. Definitely the web version, despite its limitations, is the most complete way to get closer to the experience that you can enjoy on your iPhone, or even on the iPad. Therefore, if you want to take advantage of Instagram from your Mac, our recommendation is that you use the web version of the platform.
Available apps
Once we have already told you about all the options provided by the web version of Instagram, it is time to focus on the different clients of this application that exist for macOS. The reality is that there is not much variety of applications that allow you to take advantage of Instagram within your Apple computer, but there are some that may be interesting depending on your needs.
One of the most prominent and the one that can offer a better service is Grids for Instagram . This app offers an experience that is really close to what you can find even in the iPhone app. However, its operation is not always correct and depending on what actions it can hang. At the level of functions, it is very outstanding, but really the experience is sometimes not as satisfactory as possible. Another of the apps that you have to take into account is Uplet , in this case it is completely different from Grids for Instagram, since the only thing it seeks is to be able to satisfy the need of users to upload posts to their profile in the fastest way and simple as possible.
Why is there no native app for Mac?
This is a question that both Mac users and iPad users ask themselves on a daily basis. It is really incomprehensible as one of the most used social networks in the world only has an official app for iPhone, and not for Mac and iPad, especially considering that Instagram was initially born as a place where users photographers could display and give visibility to their work, and knowing that both the iPad and the Mac have a large screen, these devices could be a perfect element where these photographs can be viewed even better .
In addition, unfortunately it seems that Meta’s plans still do not involve developing an application that is capable of satisfying the needs of these users, so we will have to continue using the different alternatives that we have exposed in this post, in the hope that One day, Instagram will have a really usable application on the Mac, and also why not, on the iPad.
