14 DAY TRIAL // During Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Jose, Instagram announced a new and exciting feature for its Android application. Instagram is now welcoming an offline mode that will allow users to continue scrolling and browsing, even without Internet connection on their smartphones or tablets.
The new offline feature helps users view content that was previously downloaded in their feeds, leave comments, like or save posts, and even unfollow other users. It seems that Instagram’s features continue to work even if mobile or WiFi Internet connection isn’t available.
Once the device connects to the Internet, all of the actions that the user previously executed will produce their effects in the background. Profiles that users recently visited will be available offline, together with cached versions of the Explore tab and profile page.
Instagram’s offline mode is intended for emerging countries, where Internet connection isn’t ideal, considering that 80% of Instagram’s 600 million users aren’t from the US and a portion of them might not have access to the Internet at all times.
Instagram’s offline feature could arrive to iOS soon
Facebook and other applications, like YouTube, launched Lite versions of their apps in order to meet the needs of users from emerging countries, but Instagram’s offline mode should do the trick, without requiring to launch a separate app. TechCrunch reports that Instagram is also exploring the idea of launching the new offline mode for the iOS version as well.
This isn’t the only major change that Instagram has prepared for its users. Just a few days ago, Instagram introduced new ways for users to organize their saved posts, by creating collections. Instagram users can simply create multiple collections, assign names to each of them and save posts.
Collections can be added to the saved posts tab on the profile and they can be set to be private. If this sounds very familiar, it’s because Pinterest is based on the same principle of offering users the tools to share pictures and save them in private or public collections.