It was first reported back in October that Instagram had been testing a horizontal feed in the Explore section of the app. However, a bug temporarily enabled the horizontal feed in the main section of the app for many users today, which caught them by surprise. It’s a completely different experience compared to the vertical feed that Instagram has had since the beginning.
You scroll through the main section of the app by swiping up. The horizontal feed essentially makes all posts appear as one big Instagram story. You tap to view the next post and the scrolling bar at the top shows the progress.
One can imagine how jarring this change would have been for users who launched the app and found that the entire user interface had been changed without warning. Moreover, it’s harder to fly through the feed in this method since it only allows users to advance one post at a time.
According to reports, this horizontal feed was only limited to the main section of the app, as opening a user’s individual profile still displayed all of their posts in the old vertical scrolling style.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri addressed the matter on Twitter. He mentioned that this was supposed to be a “very small test” that went live for more people than Instagram had anticipated. This has now been reversed so things are back to normal but it goes to show that Instagram might seriously be considering making a significant change to how users experience its app.
I have the new Instagram horizontal scroll interface. I’m sure this will not be met with any backlash WHATSOEVER. But seems maybe intended to reduce mindless vertical scrolling? cc @mosseri comments at the end 😭 pic.twitter.com/fwmtbfjFaf
— Alex Heath (@alexeheath) December 27, 2018