Instagram is finally bringing notifications to your browser

A photo of someone using the Instagram photo app in front of a computer
(Image credit: Pexels / Lisa Fotios)

Instagram is beginning to roll out notification support to users who'd prefer to scroll through photos from their friends and people they follow from a browser rather than the mobile app.

Although you've long been able to scroll through Instagram's News Feed via a browser, the best experience was always via the mobile app. This makes sense, as Instagram has always been a mobile-first offering, and the team behind it have been happy to keep it that way. 

But ensuring that mobile app users are the only ones with a true Instagram experience creates a barrier to entry for those who can't access the app for any reason.

That's why Instagram has been bolstering the web experience and adding more and more features over the past few years, the most recent being notification support that some users are reporting they've seen using Google Chrome over the past 24 hours.

We've yet to get the pop-up when logging in via Google Chrome ourselves, but our best guess is that the update is being rolled out to users slowly at the moment e'll keep you updated.  Instagram Lite, the lightweight version of Instagram that's been created for those living in areas with a slow internet connection.

We've yet to get the pop-up when logging in via Google Chrome ourselves, but our best guess is that the update is being rolled out to users slowly at the moment – we'll keep you updated. 

Becca Caddy

Becca is a contributor to TechRadar, a freelance journalist and author. She’s been writing about consumer tech and popular science for more than ten years, covering all kinds of topics, including why robots have eyes and whether we’ll experience the overview effect one day. She’s particularly interested in VR/AR, wearables, digital health, space tech and chatting to experts and academics about the future. She’s contributed to TechRadar, T3, Wired, New Scientist, The Guardian, Inverse and many more. Her first book, Screen Time, came out in January 2021 with Bonnier Books. She loves science-fiction, brutalist architecture, and spending too much time floating through space in virtual reality.