Instagram introduces better previews of posts on external platforms

Instagram is improving how posts appear outside the platform, for more audiences to discover and engage with the content on other places.

The previews have been designed to improve the experience of previewing Instagram posts on other platforms. For instance, Tweets sharing Instagram posts will now show image previews, giving a glimpse of what they would see when they're redirected via the link.

The accounts whose posts are linked in a Tweet are required to be Public for the image preview to be visible. Tweets with links to Instagram posts will be shown as a Twitter Card with an image preview in the Tweet. If users share to Twitter from Instagram, the caption from the post will also appear along with the preview.

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Feed posts such as Photos, Videos, Carousels, and Reels, will show a preview when shared to Twitter, apart from Stories. Instagram had previously enabled posts from public accounts to be embedded on external websites, users can also share previews of their profile and up to six of the most recent images.

This feature will first be available in the United States and would be expanded to more countries soon. New control for embeds has also been launched in the US, which gives the option to limit where the content appears on external platforms.

To embed an Instagram profile on the web:

• Go to the profile to be shared
• If it’s your profile, click the gear icon. If it’s another profile, click the •••
• Click 'embed' then copy embed code'
• Copy and paste the code into your website to display a profile preview