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Meta is finally working on a dedicated Instagram app for iPadOS, The Information reports, citing an employee familiar with the matter.
Details are scarce, but uncertainty around TikTok's future in the US may be a factor. Instagram's version of TikTok's vertical videos is Reels, though many clips that show up on Reels originated on TikTok. If the ByteDance-owned app goes away, however, Meta may try to fill the gap.
TikTok is currently fighting for survival in the US. It has yet to divest itself of Chinese ownership in the US, as required by a bill signed by President Biden in April 2024. Technically, President Trump was allowed to extend any decisions on a ban for 90 days beyond Jan. 19, 2025, if a deal was imminent. Instead, he extended the deadline for 75 days when he took office and then did it again earlier this month, a potentially illegal move, according to some lawmakers.
Instagram, meanwhile, launched exclusively on iOS in 2010. Meta (then Facebook) acquired Instagram in 2012 for $1 billion. It's been reluctant to launch on iPad, however. "We'd like to build an iPad app, but we only have so many people and lots to do, and it hasn't bubbled up as the next best thing to do yet," Instagram Head Adam Mosseri said in 2020.
Two years later, when YouTuber Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD) tweeted about wanting an iPad app, Mosseri responded, "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."
Per Statista, Instagram has 2 billion active users across the globe; 170 million are in the US.
Apple iPad users can currently download Instagram, but it just appears on the screen as it does on the iPhone, with black space around it. They can also log in through a web browser, though the experience isn't the same as on a dedicated app.