Instagram TV App Expands to Google TV

Ben Schoon reported last week for 9to5 Google Instagram announced its TV app has launched on Google TV. The software, focused on displaying the ever-popular Reels, arriving on Google TV was announced on Threads by Instagram leader Adam Mosseri.

“The Instagram app is available for Google TV via the Play Store now, freely available for download for anyone who wishes to install it,” Schoon wrote last Wednesday. “The app even supports sign-in without a password by approving sign-in through a phone connected to the same network.”

As I wrote in December when Instagram TV launched on Fire TV, that Reels are available on the big screen is a big deal for accessibility. Even on an ostensibly “large” phone screen, such as the one on my iPhone Air, a television’s screen is orders of magnitude larger than a smartphone’s. If you, like me, lose all sense of time and space by watching umpteenth Reels in the canonical Instagram app on the phone, having it available on a TV at least makes the time-sucking experience more visually accessible.

As a devout Apple TV 4K user, I don’t have access to Instagram TV right now; it’s curious to me, especially since, as Schoon notes, Instagram TV is exclusive to the United States, that Instagram chose Fire TV (!) and then Google TV as its gradual rollout strategy without tvOS in the mix. By contrast, it feels as though upstart streaming services always have a presence on tvOS upon their initial launch. In any case, Reels on my iPhone is not necessarily a worse experience—I’m merely pointing out how the old adage that “bigger is better” absolutely applies here, and aptly so. Whenever in the future Instagram does release the tvOS app, I’ll surely be downloading it posthaste.

Instagram TV is now available on the Google Play Store.