Photo-sharing app Instagram is one among the most popular social media apps today. Youth and millennials are constantly choosing the app even over Facebook, which was the most popular social media network for years. In an attempt to get more people on board and to provide an uninterrupted Instagram browsing experience to its users in slow internet areas, the company has today announced a new feature designed to save data and reduce image loading time.
With the new Instagram opt-in mode, people across the world will be able to view their favourite content on the app with reduced image loading time. This will be made possible by reducing the amount of data that Instagram uses on the users’ smartphones.
However, the feature is not available everywhere in the world as it is only meant for emerging markets where data plans and internet speeds may be limited. With the feature, the videos on the app will not pre-load and high-resolution images would not be downloaded until the user opts for it. The aim is to give people more control over their data usage on Instagram and increase the speed for loading images.
We should mention that this feature will be useful to many in India. According to Speedtest Global index, India’s mobile internet speeds dipped in the month of April 2019. While in December 2018, the rank was 108, currently, it has come down to 121. Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships, Facebook India, while announcing this feature, said, “Instagram gets people closer to the people and things they love. The community’s power lies in visual storytelling and sharing amazing social video moments. With this data saver feature, we’re hoping for an uninterrupted Instagram experience in slow network areas, which in turn will increase people’s interactions with their friends and family.”
Here’s how you can enable the feature:
- Go to your Instagram profile and press on the three-lined icon on the top right.
- Press on the Settings option at the bottom.
- Go to Account and then select the option of ‘Cellular Data Use’.
- Turn this setting on to prevent the loading of videos and high-resolution media in advance.
- You will now be asked to choose from three options for how Instagram will show you high-resolution files: ‘Never’, ‘Wi-Fi only’ and ‘Cellular+Wi-Fi’.
As of now, if you are not able to see the feature, don’t panic. It is being rolled out in a phased manner and will reach everyone by the end of the week. Another thing worth mentioning is that this feature is available for Android only.
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