If you live in a country where the Internet is fast and advanced smartphones are a dime a dozen, you probably take these things for granted more often than not. But for those living in places where every gigabyte and mbps counts, the need for apps that they can use properly but won’t melt their devices and their ISP is pretty important. When the tech giants started rolling out lite versions of their apps, users in these places were able to breathe a little easier. The good news for Instagram fans is that Instagram Lite is now rolling out to 170 more countries.
If you didn’t know it yet, the full Instagram app is currently 30MB. Sure, that’s fine if your smartphone has a lot of space for apps and files. But for those that have low budget devices but would still like to explore the photo and video sharing app, that’s a problem. The Tel Aviv-based team that has been developing the lite version has created an Instagram Lite app that is just 2MB in size. The great news is you still have all of the core features of the app so you won’t really feel shortchanged.
Those who will install this lite version will be able to enjoy things like the basic ones in the photos and videos as well as Stories and Instagram TV or IGTV and even animated GIFs and stickers. Aside from cutting the features that made it such a heavy app, like unnecessary animations and AI filters, they were also able to trim down the UI and make sure that even those with low hardware and slow connections will be able to have a good IG experience.
This isn’t the first “lite” product from Facebook of course as their Facebook Lite has been around for a few years now. In fact, the team that developed Instagram Lite took a page from this (also developed by a Tel Aviv-based team) and also offloaded into the cloud most of the code from the app running on the phone. But some important features, like dark mode, will not be implemented just yet.
Instagram Lite is now available for downloading from the Google Play Store if you’re in one of the 170 countries where it’s now available. They plan to make it available globally eventually although they have not mentioned if iOS devices will also get it soon.
