How to Install Instagram on Mac as an App

Instagram is one of the most popular social networks out there, focused around the sharing of photos and videos, and people use it for myriad reasons. While iPhone and Android users can install Instagram on their device through the respective app stores, Mac users who want to install Instagram have a different route entirely.

If you’ve wanted the ability to use Instagram on the Mac as an application, you’ll be happy to know that the new web apps feature in Safari makes it possible. With this trick, you’ll have Instagram in your Mac Dock like any other application, and when clicked it will launch the Instagram web app as an application running on your Mac.

How to Add Instagram Web App to Mac

Installing Instagram as an app in the Mac Dock requires using the new web apps feature of Safari in macOS Sonoma 14 and newer.

1. Open Safari on the Mac if you haven’t done so already
2. Go to https://instagram.com in a Safari window, then resize it to the size you would like the Instagram web app to be
3. Pull down the “File” menu and choose “Add to Dock”



4. Keep Instagram, or customize the web app name if you’d like and click “Add”



5. Instagram will appear in the Mac Dock as a web app

Now you can launch Instagram directly from the Dock in MacOS.

Instagram runs as a separate app, process and everything, independent from the main Safari app. That means you can quit Instagram and continue to use Safari and vice versa.

Apple Silicon equipped Macs can also side load apps and install iPhone apps to the Mac and run them natively, so you could also take that approach to run Instagram on the Mac too. Third party tools like iMazing also be used for this purpose, by making it easy to get the Instagram IPA file form the iPhone and copy it to the Mac, where it will run like any other MacOS application, but in the iPhone screen ratio. For this reason, most users prefer the experience of using Instagram on the Mac through Safari, since it’s better optimized for larger screen devices, like the Mac.

As mentioned before, this requires macOS Sonoma or newer. Earlier versions of MacOS do not have this capacity, however you can still add website shortcuts to the Dock in all versions of MacOS, and you could use that to add a bookmark to Instagram.com in the Mac Dock.

Many Mac users and iPad users have long wanted an Instagram app for macOS and ipadOS, but Meta (FaceBook/Instagram) has thus far not heeded the call to build one directly.