It is well known that Instagram only really works on a smartphone. There are apps for iOS and Android, but there isn’t even a tablet version of the app. You can, of course, view Instagram from the desktop or on a tablet, in any browser (check out my photos on Instagram), but you can’t post or manage your photos.
Well, actually, you can, with a bit of trickery. If you use Safari on macOS, you can do anything that you can do in the Instagram app. Here’s how.
Start by going to Safari > Preferences, then click the Advanced tab. At the bottom of the window, checks Show Develop menu in menu bar.
Next, go to the Develop menu and choose User Agent > Safari – iOS 10 – iPhone. This tells Safari to pretend that it is the iPhone version. It will reload the current web page, but in its mobile version. This is the way Instagram displays its content in its app, and loading its page like this allows you to do everything you can in the app.
Click the camera icon at the bottom of the page, and you can upload a photo. Select it from the dialog that Safari displays, then add a filter, edit it, or click Next to add a caption or tags. The page will offer to auto-complete any tags you begin typing, as the mobile app does.
Click Share, and Safari sends your photo to Instagram.
This is very useful if you want to add a lot of tags to your photos; it’s much easier to do this from a keyboard than in the Instagram app.
When you’ve finished, return to the Develop menu and choose User Agent > Default (Automatically Chosen).