Instagram photos are now bigger and better
Just over a week ago, I wrote plaintively about Instagram's archaic 640 x 640 resolution and the need to move with the times and give users the ability to upload larger images. This past Friday, it appears, Instagram has started addressing that very issue, as photos sent to the popular image sharing app are now being stored in a higher 1080 x 1080 size.
The higher-resolution pictures are not yet being displayed as such by Instagram, which maintains its smaller default for now.
But a quick check of the source code on Instagram's web view reveals that new photos uploaded to it are being saved in 1080px resolution, likely in preparation to making a full and public switch to the greater size in the coming days or weeks. We have reached out to Instagram to find out more. The company's last comments on the matter indicated that it
neither uploads nor stores images at any greater resolution that its standard 640 x 640.
neither uploads nor stores images at any greater resolution that its standard 640 x 640.
Verge reader Alejandro de la Torre was among the first to spot the larger Instagrams, stumbling upon the bigger preview when he received a link via Telegram. It's important to
note that these aren't merely 640px images stretched out to fill the larger size; we are looking
at legitimate 1080px photos, with a quality reasonably close to the original. It's too soon to
say whether Instagram's persistent issue of over-compressing images coming from its
Android app has been addressed, but both Android and iOS uploads are being stored in the higher res now. Check out a few of our latest posts on Instagram below, accompanied by
their larger, more beautiful versions.
note that these aren't merely 640px images stretched out to fill the larger size; we are looking
at legitimate 1080px photos, with a quality reasonably close to the original. It's too soon to
say whether Instagram's persistent issue of over-compressing images coming from its
Android app has been addressed, but both Android and iOS uploads are being stored in the higher res now. Check out a few of our latest posts on Instagram below, accompanied by
their larger, more beautiful versions.
To uncover your own 1080px photos, use a desktop browser like Chrome or Firefox to open up an Instagram photo page's source HTML code, then search for ".jpg" within it. The first result should be the URL to the larger version of the picture.
An Instagram spokesperson tells us that the company started "gradually rolling out 1080 across iOS and Android" last week, meaning that most people should already be seeing the higher-resolution images in the mobile app. Alas, Instagram on the desktop remains a second-class citizen, as Instagram says that "right now we are focused on mobile, with no plans to share on web."
