Instagram’s New “Swipe Left” Feature (The Good & The Bad)

Ever sat down & stared at your phone, trying to decide which of the 5 angles of your burger looked the best? Hate spending time editing your day-trip photos to collage them the best way into frames?

Introducing: Instagram’s new “swipe left” feature! Much like a story on Instagram or Snapchat, you can now post up to 10 photos/videos in a single entry and under 1 caption. It counts once and shares all the likes & comments.

So how can you tell that there are more photos/videos to see in a post? The dots underneath the collection indicate that additional media can be seen (much like a slideshow on a website). Plus in a user’s profile, that same post will also have an icon in the top right corner, much like the “burst photo” icon in an iPhone. Here’s what Instagram has to say about this new feature:

“Surprise! 🎉 Swipe left on the post above to see more.
Starting today, you can share up to 10 photos and videos in one post on Instagram. With this update, you no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember.
When uploading to your feed, you’ll see a new icon to select multiple photos and videos. It’s easy to control exactly how your post will look. You can tap and hold to change the order, apply a filter to everything at once or edit one by one. These posts have a single caption and are square-only for now.
On a profile grid, you’ll notice the first photo or video of a post has a little icon, which means there’s more to see. And in feed, you’ll see blue dots at the bottom of these posts to let you know you can swipe to see more. You can like and comment on them just like a regular post.
This update is available as part of Instagram version 10.9 for iOS in the Apple App Store and for Android on Google Play. To learn more, check out help.instagram.com.”

Of course, as soon as I saw this feature launch I had to try it right away. Here’s what I posted:

As embedded above, you’ll see dots underneath the photo but instead of left/right arrows to scroll through photos in a browser, you’d be able to swipe to progress in the app. I was super excited to try this feature out, and the obvious pro is that when you really can’t decide which photo to select from a “shoot”… now you can post multiple! (All you have to do is figure out the order in which to post them.) But I was disappointed to find that there are so many cons already (edited as Instagram fixes them)…

Cons

1. While posting these are great… once you post it, that’s it. You can’t rearrange the order of the multi (but changing the tagged location is still possible). So hit “Share” when you’re finally ready!
2. For Business accounts, your Insights & Promote buttons may not work at times.
3. Editing one of your 10 may be glitchy still. The preview may not match the final product. So keep your eyes peeled! And if necessary, delete and repost.
4. This feature cannot mix square & rectangle shots. It will crop it one way or the other.

As you can see, there are still a lot of kinks to work out but it’s a nice addition to Instagram. I hope the things I pointed out will get fixed over time!

What do you think of this new feature so far?