Posting to Instagram is great but…
Instagram is a great social media tool for any business, big or small. It allows you to visually show your work quickly and easily to an audience and get feedback about what they think about it. You can also get inspiration by looking at the visual ideas and creativity of others.
However, Instagram is designed to work from a smartphone and that isn’t always the ideal place to be posting from as a business. Here at Green eye, our posts are created as Word or Google documents. Screenshots are then added before being turned into WordPress and social media posts. All of this happens on a Windows desktop and nowhere near a smartphone.
Instagram via a browser
So, the ideal scenario would be post to Instagram from a desktop computer’s browser. At first, I didn’t think this was possible. When I log in to Instagram in a browser, I can see the Instagram account information.
But there is no button anywhere to allow me to upload any images. I did some Google searching and found that it is possible. I just have to make my browser tab temporarily act like a smartphone. Once I’ve done this, I can post images as if I was doing it from my phone.
With that in mind, and in case you ever need to do the same thing, here are instructions for three browsers you might find on a Windows 10 machine. Google Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. Sorry if you are reading this and are a Mac user using Safari. Unfortunately, I don’t have a Mac available to hand to work out steps for it. The good news is both the Chrome and Firefox instructions should work just as well on Mac.
Just click on any of the down facing arrows to the right of each browser name and the full instructions will be shown to you.
Instructions
Google Chrome
Posting to Instagram in Google Chrome
To post to Instagram in Chrome, first log in to your Instagram account so you can see your Instagram home page. It will look something like this.
Now, click on this icon in the top right-hand corner of the Chrome browser that shows three vertical dots.
When you click on this icon, a drop down menu will appear. In this menu, click on the line that reads “More tools”. A sub-menu will then appear and in this menu, click on the line that reads “Developer tools”.
When you click on this line, a pane will open on the right-hand side of the browser window. This pane will take up about a third of the total width of the browser page. At the top of this pane click on the icon that looks like a smartphone screen in front of a tablet screen.
This puts the page into “Responsive Design Mode”. This means it will display the Instagram page as if it was being viewed from a smartphone or tablet.
Notice, however, that there is no button visible for adding images to Instagram. To make this button appear, click on the refresh button in the Chrome toolbar here.
The page will be refreshed and if you scroll down the browser window, you will see the usual Instagram icons including the one for uploading images.
You can now add images to Instagram from Chrome as if you were working on your smartphone!
To return Chrome back to it’s normal mode when you have finished with Instagram, click on this ‘X’ icon in the top right-hand corner. This will close the developer tools.
Chrome will go back to displaying Instagram in PC mode.
Firefox
Posting to Instagram in Firefox
To post to Instagram in Firefox, first log in to your Instagram account so you can see your Instagram home page. It will look something like this.
Now, click on this icon in the top right-hand corner of the Firefox browser that shows three horizontal lines.
When you click on this icon, a drop down menu list will appear. In this menu, click on the line near the bottom of the list that reads “Web Developer”.
When you click on this, the contents of the drop-down menu will change to show you all the Web Developer options. Near the top of the drop-down menu, click on the line that reads “Web Console”.
When you click on this line, a pane will open on the left-hand side of the browser window. This pane will take up about a third of the total width of the browser page. Don’t pay any attention to any of the red and yellow highlighted warning messages that might appear, you haven’t broken anything. At the top of this pane click on the icon that looks like a smartphone screen in front of a tablet screen.
This puts the page into “Responsive Design Mode”. This means it will display the Instagram page as if it was being viewed from a smartphone or tablet.
Notice, however, that there is no button visible for adding images to Instagram. To make this button appear, click on the refresh button in the Firefox toolbar here.
The page will be refreshed. If you scroll down the browser window, you will see the usual Instagram icons including the one for uploading images.
You can now add images to Instagram from Firefox as if you were working on your smartphone!
To return Firefox back to it’s normal mode when you have finished with Instagram, click on this ‘X’ icon to close the left-hand pane
and then click on this ‘X’ icon in the top right-hand corner of Firefox This will stop it running in responsive design mode.
Firefox will go back to displaying Instagram in PC mode.
Microsoft Edge
Posting to Instagram in Microsoft Edge
To post to Instagram in Microsoft Edge, first log in to your Instagram account so you can see your Instagram home page. It will look something like this.
Now, click on this icon in the top right-hand corner of the Edge browser that shows three horizontal dots.
When you click on this icon, a drop down menu will appear. In this menu, click on the line that reads “More tools”. A sub-menu will then appear and in this menu, click on the line that reads “Developer tools”.
When you click on this line, a pane will open on the right-hand side of the browser window This pane will take up about a third of the total width of the browser page. At the top of this pane click on the icon that looks like a smartphone screen in front of a tablet screen.
This puts the page into “Responsive Design Mode”. This means it will display the Instagram page as if it was being viewed from a smartphone or tablet.
Notice, however, that there is no button visible for adding images to Instagram. To make this button appear, click on the refresh button in the Edge toolbar here.
The page will be refreshed. If you scroll down the browser window, you will see the usual Instagram icons including the one for uploading images.
You can now add images to Instagram from Edge as if you were working on your smartphone!
To return Edge back to it’s normal mode when you have finished with Instagram, click on this ‘X’ icon in the top right-hand corner to close the developer tools.
Edge will go back to displaying Instagram in PC mode.
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