Instagram's "Made for iPhone Duo" app still needs some work, says Instagram boss

The iPhone Duo is now available, with many discovering Apple's take on the folding phone format for the first time. While the presentation by John Ternus and friends showed some of the great experiences the phone would offer, not everything is quite that tidy.

Included on that list is Instagram, which currently struggles to take advantage of the space. Called out on Threads, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, replied to agree, saying "it's a bit of a tricky form factor".

This comes as a bit of a surprise considering Instagram is one of the apps designated by Apple as being optimised and "Made for iPhone Duo".

Apple made a major shift in the user interface on the Duo, using the right-hand edge of the display for various control elements. That means that apps need to be optimised to really take advantage of the Duo's format.

For Instagram that's what we see, with controls on the right-hand edge rather than across the bottom when you're browsing your feed.

When you open up the Duo, Instagram just sits in the middle of the screen, swimming in space and not using the additional real estate.

On rotation to portrait, the video or image naturally fills the screen better, but then controls move back to the bottom. That also highlights an inconsistency, with the back navigation to get out of a video shifting from the right to the top left.

The home screen of Instagram in portrait also doesn't fill the width of the phone with fairly large gutters left and right, while stories also don't fill the screen.

Why are some apps having issues on iPhone Duo?

While most of the attention on the iPhone Duo focuses on the folding screen and getting a larger view on the inside, there's a lot of optimisation that needs to happen to really take advantage of the space.

Some will just create columns, basically giving a two screen view, which for Instagram could see the content on one side and comments on the other, although it's debatable how many people are that invested in comments. For a creator it's a big deal, but for a casual browser, it probably isn't.

It's not just the iPhone Duo that needs app optimisation – in many cases all folding phones do and that's evident on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 too. The first case in point here is Samsung's use of screen space with its default keyboard, which eats half the cover screen leaving little space to see what you're actually doing.

This will all come together over time, but with so many apps designed around 20:9 displays (more or less), there's a bit of work to be done to fill the space, make the controls make sense, and offer a better experience.