Instagram is testing vertical profile grids — and knows that might mess up layouts

Instagram is investigating a perchance large alteration to illustration pages: making the squares successful your illustration grid vertical rectangles. Some users recently spotted the test, and determination person been indications from at slightest 2022 that the institution has toyed with a rectangular grid.

“The immense bulk of what is uploaded to Instagram contiguous is vertical,” Mosseri says successful an Instagram Story from Friday discussing the test. “It’s either 4 by 3 successful a photograph oregon 9 by 16 successful a video, and cropping it down to quadrate is beauteous brutal.”

Mosseri notes that “squares are from mode backmost successful the time erstwhile you tin lone upload quadrate photos to Instagram,” a regulation Instagram removed each the mode backmost in 2015. Mosseri besides knows that this illustration alteration mightiness beryllium annoying for radical who person spent a batch of clip “curating and making definite everything lines up,” but helium says that “I would truly similar to bash amended by the contented today.”

“We’re investigating a vertical illustration grid with a tiny fig of people,” Instagram spokesperson Christine Pai says successful a connection to The Verge. “This is simply a constricted test, and we’ll beryllium listening to feedback from the assemblage earlier rolling thing retired further.”

Still, if you’ve meticulously planned retired your illustration grid astir squares, you mightiness privation to hole for those squares to someday alteration into rectangles.

Here’s a transcription of Mosseri’s Story: