Is Instagram going to ruin your grid with rectangles?

Instagram is all about vertical content, and that might mean changing the look of your profile grid.

A few days ago, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted a story on his app detailing a change we’ve seen coming since at least 2022.

“We’re actually testing a vertical grid, for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, for your profile, instead of squares,” Mosseri said. This follows a November 2022 post on X from reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi showing just how Instagram might change the aspect ratio of your profile grid. While that might sound like a visual nightmare, screenshots Paluzzi got his hands on don’t actually look very bad.

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“The vast majority of what is uploaded to Instagram today is vertical,” Mosseri said. “It’s either 4 by 3 in a photo or 9 by 16 in a video, and cropping it down to square is pretty brutal.”

Instagram spokesperson Christine Pai told the Verge that the company is “testing a vertical profile grid with a small number of people” and will “be listening to feedback from the community before rolling anything out further.”

It makes sense, as the photos we upload are rarely square anymore. The company is famously prioritizing Reels, which are vertical every time. But this could be a tough change for creators and users who have crafted a perfect Instagram grid. It’s a mixed bag!