How to post on Instagram.

Which format to use

The format decides who sees a post more than anything you write in it, so it is worth choosing before you open the camera. A photo or carousel reaches mostly the people who already follow you. A Reel is the one format Instagram recommends to people who do not, which makes it the format for finding new customers. A story is a short note to your existing followers that disappears after a day.

How to post a photo on Instagram

The photo can come straight from your camera roll. Nothing has to be taken inside the app, and the picker opens on your most recent photos. An iPhone Live Photo is best converted to a video first, as how to post a Live Photo on Instagram shows.

1. Tap Create at the top, or swipe right anywhere in Feed.
2. Tap POST, then choose a photo from your library, or tap Take photo to shoot one.
3. Tap Next, add a filter or adjust the photo, then tap Next again.
4. Write a caption, add a location, tag people, and add music if you want it.
5. Tap Share.

Instagram keeps a photo at its original width if it is between 320 and 1,080 pixels wide, and resizes anything outside that. The shape matters more. Any ratio from a wide 1.91:1 to a tall 3:4 is accepted as it is; a photo outside that range is cropped to fit.

For a feed photo that takes up as much of the screen as possible, 1080 by 1350 is the safe choice: it is well inside the range and taller than a square.

How to post several photos at once

A carousel is the same flow with one extra tap. Tap POST, then SELECT MULTIPLE, and choose up to 20 photos and videos. All of them take the same orientation, so a mix of portrait and landscape shots is cropped to one shape. You can write one caption for the whole post or one per slide, tag different people on each item, and drag the slides into a new order before sharing.

Two things catch people out. A video inside a carousel is not a Reel, so it does not show in the Reels tab or get Reels features. And once the post is up you can change the order of the slides, but you cannot swap a photo for another one. Our guide to the Instagram carousel covers sizes and what to put on the first slide, and how to post multiple photos goes through the steps with every option.

How to post a Reel

1. Tap Create, then REEL.
2. Record with the camera, or add a video from your camera roll.
3. Tap Next, then Edit video to trim clips, reorder them and place text and music on the timeline.
4. Tap Next, choose a cover, write the caption, and tap Share.

A Reel can be up to 20 minutes long, but Instagram only recommends Reels of 3 minutes or less to people who do not follow you. Since reaching those people is the main reason to post a Reel, 3 minutes is the practical limit. The full picture is in how long Instagram Reels can be.

How to post a story

Tap Create and choose STORY, or swipe right from Feed to open the story camera. Take a photo or video or pick one from your camera roll, add text, stickers or music, and share it to Your story, or to Close Friends if it is only for them.

A story stays up for 24 hours. Add it to a highlight and it stays on your profile until you take it off. A video clip in a story can run up to 60 seconds, and anything longer is split into several clips. There is more on timing in how long Instagram stories last, and you can also schedule an Instagram story ahead from a computer.

Caption, hashtags, tags and alt text

All of these sit on the last screen, just before Share.

• Caption. Feed shows only the start of a caption before cutting it off, so the point of the post belongs in the first line, not a greeting. There is no bold or italic formatting; the workaround and its costs are in how to write in italics on Instagram.
• Hashtags. Up to five per post, in the caption or in a comment. A post with more than five will not go through. Our guide to hashtags for Reels covers how to choose the five.
• Tag people. Tap Tag people and tap where they appear. On a carousel each slide can have its own tags.
• Location. One per post. Add it to anything made, sold or served in a real place.
• Alt text. Before sharing, tap More options, then Write alt text. After sharing, tap Options, Edit, then Edit Alt Text. It describes the image to people who use screen readers.

Posting from a computer

Photos and videos can go to Feed straight from instagram.com in a browser, and the Help Center has computer steps for it. Stories are the exception: instagram.com does not post them, whether you are on a PC or a Mac.

For a business account, Meta Business Suite is usually the better desktop tool, because it can schedule as well as publish, stories included. Choose Create post or Create reel, pick the Instagram profile, add the media and text, then publish or schedule. It has two limits of its own: 10 photos per Instagram post instead of 20, and no Reels made from photos.

Scheduling also works inside the app on a phone, for up to 25 posts a day and up to 30 days ahead, on a public account. Both routes are set out step by step in how to schedule Instagram posts.

Posting to Facebook at the same time

One post can go to both platforms, once the two accounts are joined in Accounts Center. This works only in the Instagram app on Android or iPhone.

For a single post, go through the steps as normal, and before you share, scroll down to Also share on and turn on your Facebook Page. To do it for every post from now on, go to Profile, Menu, Accounts Center, Connected experiences, Sharing across profiles, pick the two accounts and turn on Your Instagram posts.

The result is not quite what most people expect:

The first row explains a common complaint. A brand that has cross posted for months and sees no reach on Facebook may simply have been posting to Friends. Sharing in the other direction, from Facebook to Instagram, runs through Meta Business Suite and needs a Facebook Page linked to a professional Instagram account; linking Facebook to Instagram explains which connection you have.

Drafts

If you back out of a post halfway through, Instagram offers to save it as a draft, and you find it later by tapping Create and then Drafts. Drafts are stored on the phone, not the account, so they do not appear if you log in on another device and they are lost if you uninstall the app. A post with no edit, caption, tag or location cannot be saved as a draft at all, which is why the option is sometimes missing.

Every limit in one table

Knowing the formats is half of it; the other half is knowing which one your audience responds to. If you run the account for a business, the free social media audit reads the last thirty posts and tells you which of these formats is working for you.

How we will test this

Not run yetEverything above comes from the published sources listed below, and nothing here is presented as something we measured. Our own test on live accounts has not been run yet.

This is the test we will run: we post one of each format from our own test accounts on iPhone and Android: a photo, a carousel of 20, a Reel and a story, with a caption, five hashtags, alt text, a location and a tag. We record each screen and what the post looks like afterwards.

Platforms change behavior without announcing it, so once the first test is run we repeat it every quarter, and this section will say when it was run and on which devices and app versions.

Sources

Read on September 23, 2026.

• Instagram Help Center, Post a photo on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Share a post with multiple photos or videos on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Image resolution of photos you share on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Use hashtags on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Edit the alternative text for a post on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Save a post as a draft on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, Record a reel on Instagram
• Instagram Help Center, How to create and manage scheduled posts and Reels

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