Life

How To Post On Instagram Without The App
by Lily Feinn
Young beautiful woman using smartphone during lunch in a Japanese restaurant.
Luke Chan/E+/Getty Images

Good news for smartphone users: Learning how to post on Instagram without the app is easier than you ever thought. The photo sharing platform is now allowing users to post pics through its mobile site. Previously, Instagram.com was only good for scrolling through your main Feed and liking posts, with Stories, videos, and photo posting and editing limited to the app. On May 7, however, Matt Navarra of The Next Web alerted 'grammers on Twitter that Instagram had expanded its mobile services, giving users the ability to "upload photos and publish new posts via the web." Unfortunately, these perks do not extend to desktop users, and may not be available to all Instagram users — but that doesn't mean they'll never roll out to the desktop site and all other users.

The photo posting and editing options look to be a little limited — a little experimentation resulted only in bare bones posts — but it's still an exciting move towards expanding Insta's user base. I mean, the more ways to post, the better, right? As an Instagram spokesperson told Mashable, "Instagram.com (accessed from mobile) is a web experience optimized for mobile phones. It’s designed to help people have a fuller experience on Instagram no matter what device or network they are on."

To try out the new online experience, follow these simple steps and learn how to quickly post photos on Instagram using the web.

1Open The Mobile Website

Lucia Peters/Bustle

To begin, open the browser on your mobile device and head over to Instagram's website. If you have the photo posting functionality, once the homepage loads, you will see a camera icon in the center of the menu at the bottom of the screen. The site will prompt you to check out the new capability by suggesting that you "Post a photo."

2Tap The Camera Icon

Lucia Peters/Bustle

Tapping the camera icon will bring up a menu of photo options. You can choose to "Take Photo" with the mobile device you're using or grab a pic from your "Photo Library" or "iCloud Drive" (that is, if you want to post a #latergram).

3Take A Photo Or Use One From Your Library

Lucia Peters/Bustle

If you choose to take a photo, Instagram will direct you to an in-web camera function (as seen above).

4Edit Your Photo

Lucia Peters/Bustle

Editing functions appear to be significantly paired down in the mobile version. Users can rotate the photo and change its size and shape, but filter lovers might be out of luck. (Or, alternatively, Bustle's Lucia Peters and I may have just had trouble locating where the filters are in the mobile site version of the social network. The jury's still out on that one.)

5Add A Caption

Lucia Peters/Bustle

Once you hit "Next," Instagram will prompt you to add a caption to your post.

6Post Your Glorious Photo

Hit "Share" and send you beautiful photo out into the interwebs! Your post should appear on your followers' Feeds regardless of how they access Instagram.

Post away, my friends!