Instagram from your Computer
Instagram is the most popular Social Media Application for sharing photos. Unlike other Social Media Companies that started when the vast majority of people visited via a laptop or desktop and have both websites and apps, Instagram is purely App based but you can use Instagram to view, heart and comment but uploading pictures is typically only possible within the native app and not the website.
While there are 3rd party web based applications that give you the ability to upload to Instagram from your computer, this also means you have to provide that third party app, your Instagram user credentials. This can open you up to being hacked if their database gets breached.
Why Does Instagram Focus purely on Smartphones?
Smartphones are literally miniature computers with both video and photo capabilities that rival even the best point and shoot cameras out there. So the process of taking a picture and sharing it instantaneously on Instagram is seamless. Plus, people carry and spend the majority of their time with their mobile devices. So this is one of the reasons Instagram is purely app based.
What About Editing Photos with PhotoShop for Instagram?
But sometimes you want to edit the photo with tools like PhotoShop which have greater editing capabilities than the native photo editing applications available on smartphones. It comes down to the power of the CPU, RAM, Graphics Card and SSD’s that are significantly better on laptops and desktops. Check out my previous article on How To Edit Photos for Instagram, YouTube & WordPress.
So the question becomes, How do you edit your photos before uploading to Instagram? You could follow the tedious task of:
- taking a picture with your phone
- transfer it to your computer with your cloud platform of choice
- edit the photo on your computer
- then transfer it again to your phone
- and upload it to Instagram
That’s a 5 step process which for one photo, might not be an issue but if you frequently upload to Instagram, then this will be time consuming.
Previous Instagram Video Tutorial
I previously created a video that demonstrated the process of uploading directly to Instagram using the chrome browser but the video at the top of this post shows you how to upload using any web browser on both MacOs and Windows PC.
The tested browsers are:
- Chrome
- Safari
- Firefox
- Edge
This means you can literally take the photo with your phone and with your cloud platform of choice, whether it’s:
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
- DropBox
- iCloud
You can make it a 3 step process versus a 5 step process. Which improves your productivity and empowers you to use more powerful tools when editing your pictures.
The quick explanation of how to get this done is after you transfer your photo with your cloud platform or direct transfer to your computer and after you edit the photo with your favorite photo editing tool. Follow these steps
Chrome:
- visit your user profile on Instagram’s website
- Login
- right click in the browser window
- click inspect
- toggle the mobile icon
- refresh browser if needed
- click the camera icon which will be displayed
- choose the image you want to use
- then click next
- add your caption and hashtags
- then click share
Firefox
- visit your user profile on Instagram’s website
- Login
- right click in the browser window
- click inspect
- toggle the mobile icon
- towards the top of your browser window click the phrase No Device Selected
- select a device to emulate. In the video above I select the iPhone
- click the camera icon which will be displayed
- choose the image you want to use
- then click next
- add your caption and hashtags
- then click share
Microsoft Edge
- visit your user profile on Instagram’s website
- Login
- right click in the browser window
- click inspect
- click the Emulation tab
- choose a different user agent
- I chose the ipad
- click the camera icon which will be displayed
- choose the image you want to use
- then click next
- add your caption and hashtags
- then click share
Safari
- visit your user profile on Instagram’s website
- Login
- click the Developer Link in the Safari Browser toolbar
- hover over the user agent link
- choose the Safari iphone option
- click the camera icon which will be displayed
- choose the image you want to use
- then click next
- add your caption and hashtags
- then click share
Instagram Like a Pro from your Computer
As you can see, it’s really easy to upload pictures directly to Instagram from your computer. Make sure to watch the video at the top of this post to see a visual demonstration on how to get this done.
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