Header credits: https://unsplash.com/search/phone?photo=YsJkVNMH_Q4

It’s pretty difficult not to sound like a clickbait article as soon as you bring numbers into the equation (ha!) so I decided to just steer into the skid. Also because my alternative title was going to be the 3 (Instagram) Hackmigos which feels like it would’ve been worse. You’re welcome.

1 // POSTING FROM A COMPUTER

I’m just going to start with this one because it’s obviously the most exciting one. For too long Instagram users have been unable to post from anywhere other than a phone/tablet. This is obviously fine if you’re a casual user or if you don’t do extensive editing on your desktop but if you do fall into that category of users who have always had to hop their files between camera > desktop > phone for posting, you’re probably going to be super pumped.

Here’s how you do it on Chrome: open an incognito window > more tools > developer tools > click on the mobile/tablet icon in the right section to toggle the device > log into Instagram > rejoice

Okay now that I’ve gotten you all excited, here are the drawbacks:

• you can’t post multiple pictures/album yet
• you can only seem to rotate your image
• there is no editing function not even for resizing or repositioning which part of the picture you want, so you better be uploading the exact thing that you want to be posted
• you can’t save as a draft

But still, rejoice if you are ready to post the picture as is when you upload it!

2 // USING THE COLLECTION VIEW FOR POSTING SNEAK PEEKS OF NEW POSTS

Ever since stories became a thing on Instagram it seemed like everyone has switched from telling users to turn on post notifications (which is sporadically accurate and irritating at best) to posting notices in their story that there’s a new post. It makes sense since the stories are right at the top of the main page and it’s easier to tell people news that way than waiting for them to scroll down to your post (if they ever do – thanks algorithm).

I’ve noticed that most people just post a screenshot of their feed with the new post blocked out. I found a much nicer method of presenting your newest post in your story, it’s much less cluttered.

Just save your post and then go to your saved posts and screenshot while doing a long press on the picture. It’ll blur out the background and present you with a nicely framed picture.

3 // SWIPE AND HOLD (CONTINUOUS ALBUM)

Honestly the first time I saw anything like the continuous album picture it was one of the top posts on r/Tinder.

But then Instagram rolled out the functionality of posting multiple pictures and some super creative people (not me) immediately picked up on how it could be used in a similar fashion. My favourite examples are this comic by @adamtots and all of @camtwo‘s posts. She’s really where I picked up on the term #SwipeAndHold. My awkward screen recording doesn’t really do it justice, you should go check it out for yourselves!

I did give this method a shot myself which yielded pretty cool results that don’t translate well when you’re on desktop. The trickiest part is cropping your picture to the x:1 ratio before then further splitting it for the multiple posts.

ImageSplitter is the best site that I’ve found so far for this task – you can easily crop it to the correct aspect ration first then download and split that file. It’s also super handy if you want to make a 3 in a row pictures on your feed or a 3×3 square.

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And that’s the three cool Instagram hacks (tricks) that I’ve learned recently! I hope it helps you with your ‘gram game. If you know other cool things that I should check out let me know in the comments!

xoxo, Vick