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Instagram just announced an update to its iOS app that will let you pinch to zoom on photos or videos. The new feature will be available across the entire app, according to Instagram — pinch-to-zoom will work on the media that shows up in your standard feed as well as on people’s profiles and in the Explore tab. Instagram said the new feature will be rolling out to Android "in the coming weeks."
Zooming in on photos and videos in Instagram is a feature that has been requested enough over the years that there is actually a wealth of "how to" posts that point people to the zoom feature in the accessibility menus of Android and iOS. I grabbed the update from the App Store but the feature still isn’t live in my app. Instagram posted a video announcing the feature that offers a vague idea of what pinch-to-zoom will look like, but PetaPixel apparently already got its hands on a working version here:
It looks like when you pinch photos and videos, a lightbox effect takes place and then they actually come out of the original frame as you zoom. It’s a handy way of peeking at the details, but don’t be surprised if things look a bit gross when you zoom in too far — Instagram still caps uploads at around 1080 pixels wide.