Have you ever seen pages that try to align several cut images to form a giant image when you view it from their profile? That is only possible when the photo grid is strictly square – but Instagram is reportedly testing a new layout that may just permanently break these perfectly aligned images.
Instagram Ditching The Square
In a Story, Instagram head Adam Mosseri argued that “the vast majority of what is uploaded to Instagram today is vertical,” and that “cropping it down to square is pretty brutal.” It’s worth noting that the photo-sharing social media used to strictly allow square images only (up until 2015), which is part of the reason pages have adapted to utilize this restriction to create giant pre-aligned images in the photo grid.
Mosseri further stated that “squares are from way back in the day when you can only upload square photos to Instagram,” noting that the format is insufficient to deal with modern-day content. He admits that this change may caused troubles for those who spent lots of time aligning photos, but there’s probably nothing you can do about it if the change does happen.
In a statement provided to The Verge, spokesperson Christine Pai told the publication that the feature is currently tested “with a small number of people,” though reports of such tests were found all the way back in 2022. Still, that raises one blatantly obvious question: why not just make it an option instead of forcing this change on everyone?
Pokdepinion: And this is exactly why I have issues with modern UX design decisions.
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