Over the weekend, your perfectly curated square Instagram profile grid disappeared — replaced with a vertical rectangle format instead. As Reels and Stories became the most popular features on Instagram, users began to engage better with vertical, rectangular content more than the iconic squares. While this change is not completely unexpected, Instagram didn’t provide an official announcement or timeline before the full roll-out this weekend — leaving brands with misaligned and oddly cropped published content on Monday morning.
While the Instagram feed still accepts square, landscape and vertical formats, the best practice is to format your content in a way that will not interfere with the appearance of your business profile’s grid. Additionally, in 2024, vertical format media surpassed square-format content as the highest engaging format on Instagram with an average engagement rate of 1.43% — compared to 1.39% engagement on square media and 1.26% on landscape format media.
As per the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri:
“We started with the tall grid because most photos and videos that are uploaded to Instagram at this point are vertical and rectangles do a better job showing off those photos and videos. That said, I know some of you spend a lot of time tweaking your grids and this blew all of that up, so we’re going to improve the ability to customize those thumbnails to make it easier to get back to a place you’re happy with.”
While it will take social media managers some time to re-adjust their content, the higher engagement rates for vertical content will have beneficial results in the long run.
Note: At this time, Facebook profiles and feeds still display a mix of media sizes including square, landscape and vertical. We recommend A/B testing various formats on Facebook to determine which format works best for your business.
New Recommended Instagram Photo Size
Images: The new recommended Instagram image aspect ratio is 4:5 with a maximum image size of 1080 x 1350 px.
Reels: The recommended aspect ratio for Instagram Reels is 9:16 with a maximum image size of 1080 x 1920 px.
Stories: The recommended aspect ratio for Instagram Stories is 9:16 with a maximum image size of 1080 x 1920 px.
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