Instagram Finally Adds Pinch-To-Zoom On Photos And Videos

Starting today, you can pinch to zoom on photos and videos in feed, on profiles and on Explore. Dive into an adorable puppy’s smile or into every detail of your friend’s new shirt. Over the past six months, you’ve seen many exciting changes come to Instagram, from a new icon to longer videos and even a new way to share everyday moments with Instagram Stories. And as things change, we’re still focused on improving the core parts of Instagram. Zoom is available today for Instagram on iOS. Zoom will be available on Android in the coming weeks.

A video posted by Instagram (@instagram) on Aug 31, 2016 at 8:00am PDT

One of the truly frustrating things about looking at images on Instagram is the inability to zoom in and see more detail. Today, the company has announced that pinch-to-zoom will finally work on both photos and videos from here on out.

The feature is coming to iOS today, but the announcement says Android users shouldn’t expect to do any zooming for another couple weeks.

It’s unclear if Instagram is going to be upping the resolution on the images in order to accommodate closer viewing, or if we’re just going to be seeing expanded images in their current form.

The video demo seems to work pretty much exactly as you would expect, with the UI disappearing and the photo taking up the entire screen while you zoom in. Then, when you let go of the pinch, the photo snaps back into its usual Instagram wrapper.

It will be interesting to see how users react to this change. One of the big bonuses about Instagram was that a flawed image could be passable because of its tiny, no-zoom presentation. Sharing to Facebook meant that zooming would be enabled and the photos never looked particularly great. Now, Instagram photos might have to be, well, good to stand up to the close scrutiny that’s now possible.