The social network will continue to implement full-screen content. So, according to sources, in the next week or two, Instagram will start testing long photos in 9:16 format.

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Now Instagram allows you to upload vertical photos in maximum 4:5 format. Therefore, writers often have to crop a significant part of their images.

You can have long videos, but not long photos on Instagram. So we thought we should make sure we treat both equally.
– Adam Mosseri commented during the weekly Ask Me Everything Today broadcast.

Adding support for long 9:16 photos will help them fill the entire screen while navigating the app feed.

Comparison of 9:16 and 4:5 formats / Photo of Channel 24

Long photos were supposed to be one of the changes in a large-scale update that was supposed to resemble the social network TikTok – by swiping one post at a time, overlaying parts of the content’s interface, increasing the number of videos in the feed, etc. You can follow the link in photographer Thomas Fitzgerald’s article to learn more about this update and see what it looked like before it was cancelled.

But users didn’t like it so much that the company’s own research found a significant drop in frequency of using the app with the new design. That’s why the update was pulled back and they promised to work on the bugs. What this will result in is currently unclear, but Adam Mosseri continues to insist that Instagram will now focus more on video content than photos.