CogSend now posts to Instagram
CogSend now posts to Instagram, which makes it six platforms along with Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Threads and X. In the intro post I said Instagram, TikTok and YouTube were the ones I was thinking about next, and this is the first one out.
From v1.21.0, you can publish and schedule to an Instagram Business or Creator account from the same composer as everything else.
What goes out depends on what you attach.
- One photo goes out as a photo post.
- Two to ten photos go out as a carousel.
- A video on its own goes out as a Reel, with its cover.
- A thread is flattened into one caption of up to 2,200 characters.
The thing is, Instagram is stricter than the others and needs a photo or video, takes photos only from 4:5 tall to 1.91:1 wide, and takes no GIFs. When an Instagram account is selected and a post breaks one of these, the composer shows a line naming the problem with an Uncheck Instagram button, and Publish and Schedule stay disabled until you fix it. The other accounts are never held to these rules.
It also takes only JPEG, so when you attach a PNG or WebP, the browser stores a full-size JPEG copy for Instagram, and every other platform still gets the original.
Connecting needs your own Meta app, but there's no App Review for an account you own. A personal Instagram account can switch to Creator for free, no Facebook Page is needed, and an app you already use for Threads works too. The steps are in the Instagram setup docs.
And if you'd rather skip the developer app, Instagram accounts connected through Zernio get the same rules and the JPEG copy.
Apart from this, I have done multiple small adjustments and improvements in the app ever since and much more is coming.
That's it, for now.