Apps for Instagram Feed worth using, If you want to create the effect that all of your photos were taken with a DSLR camera, check out Afterlight. This app has an impressive number of tools and filters that allow you to create beautiful photos. You can even manipulate each photo’s composition with features like vignette blur and grain effects. The app is available on iPhone and Android devices.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Instagram Feed
- VSCO (iOS and Android)
Why you should try it:
VSCO photo editing app
Source: VSCO on Apple Store
VSCO is one of the original and most popular photo-editing apps. In fact, it’s so popular that more than 200 million Instagram posts feature the #VSCO hashtag.
There are 10 free preset filters that make your phone-shot photos appear as though they were captured on film. There are also a range of photo-editing tools available to help elevate your photo quality, like contrast and saturation to enhance your photos, grain which adds texture to photos, and crop and skew tools which alter the perspective of your photos.
For more than 200 preset filters and advanced photo-editing tools, upgrade from the free version of this Instagram app to become a VSCO member.
- Avatan Photo Editor (iOS and Android)
Why you should try it:
Avatan Photo Editor
Source: Avatan Photo Editor on Apple Store
As well as offering effects and filters to lay over your original photo, Avatan Photo Editor makes it easy to retouch photos and create your own customized effects for photos. The basic version of this photo-editing app is free, although there’s the option for additional features or advanced tools by making in-app purchases.
- Snapseed (iOS and Android)
Why you should try it:
Snapseed JPG and RAW files photo editing app
Source: Snapseed on App Store
With this photo-editing Instagram app, you can work on both JPG and RAW files making it a powerful tool for professional photographers.
Beyond filtering your photos using its presets, you can perform serious photo-editing tasks in Snapseed. There are 29 tools and features, allowing you to edit photos by removing elements (or even people) from the photo, adjust the geometry of buildings, use curves to control the brightness of your image, and enhance images with incredible precision.
- Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor (iOS and Android)
Why you should try it:
Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor
Source: Adobe Lightroom on App Store
Adobe products are known for their powerful photo-editing capabilities, and the Adobe Lightroom Photo Editor app is no exception. Capture and edit raw images using the app’s editing tools and elevate photos to a professional quality by adjusting their hue, saturation, exposure, shadows and more.
Try out its preset filters, get inspired by edits other Lightroom users have made using its Discover section. And learn from the interactive tutorials to take your photo-editing skills up a notch.
- A Color Story (iOS and Android)
Why you should try it:
A Color Story
Source: A Color Story on Google Play
This photo-editing app is all about making the colors in your photos pop. There are 20 free editing tools, as well as filters, effects and presets designed by professional photographers and influencers. There are also some advanced editing tools, and its Instagram grid planning preview tool helps you ensure your brand’s Instagram grid looks unified and cohesive.
Apps for instagram feed layout
1 Preview Planning App
Hailed as ‘your visual planner for Instagram’, the Preview app is a brilliant tool for predicting what your feed will look like before pressing ‘Share’. You can drag and drop your photos and videos into the layout you want then set a day and time for your post. When it’s time to go, Preview will send a notification to remind you to share your post and paste your caption.
“I love using Preview to help me plan my feed in advance. It’s no different to merchandising a shop window. You want to entice people enough that they scroll through your feed.” – @itslinamar
There’s a ton of clever features too, from the hashtag suggestion tool to free templates (like the Puzzle Feed below), as well as a dreamy selection of filters to play with.
2 UNUM
Neat freaks, rejoice! UNUM is a very cool app that has the same basic features for uploading potential images into the grid and playing about with their placement. But this one feels more on the arty side and helps serious Instagrammers to create a beautiful design.
“I’ve used UNUM since the app first launched to develop and test new updates. It now offers insights on the best time to post, your most popular hashtags and unfollowers. It’s a great all-rounder.” – @livblankson
Other nifty extras include caption presets, integration with other platforms and access across multiple devices. It makes planning on-the-go easy peasy.
3 Planoly Planning App
Of course, we have to pay homage to the OG of planner tools: Planoly. Created by designer @brandypham back in 2013, the app has honed its scheduling capabilities, making it easier than ever to use, and now enables you to manage and reply to comments all in one place.
“Planning is my jam so using Planoly has made me a happier Instagrammer. It takes all the hassle out of deciding what to share next and helps me to bring some structure to my feed (as opposed to constantly posting cat pics!). It’s so useful that you can draft content for your Stories now too.” – @delphinechui
And you’ve got to check out the new Shoplink add-on. It’s really great for small businesses. You can now tag products on your Planoly content, making it even easier to schedule posts and sell products at the same time. In the words of the savvy founder, ‘I got 99 problems but a grid ain’t one.’
4 Mosaico
Designed to ‘bring your IG feed to perfection’, Mosaico is so easy-to-use making planning totally pain-free. As well as the standard drag ‘n’ drop positioning, you can manage your feed with bulk uploads and replace a planned image but keep its caption and position in the grid.
“I work full-time so I like to plan my content on weekends using Mosaico. I’ll shoot a bunch of images when the lighting is good then schedule ahead for the coming week. It’s a life-saver!” – @camillaackley
There’s plenty of tagging help, too. We love that you can save Tag Clouds under custom categories, which populate your caption field with one tap. Hello, perfectionist’s heaven.
5 Plann
Last but not least, we have Plann. This is a fuss-free app that is very straight forward to use. Aside from the standard scheduling, you can have plenty of fun with your images, from retouching and resizing to using stickers, borders and text to make your content truly pop.
“I like the colours on my feed to balance, which is harder than it sounds when my wardrobe is every shade of the rainbow! Plann helps a lot. You can switch images about like an ingenious jigsaw puzzle.” – @rosannafalconer
It’s pretty neat that you can link the app to your Google Drive and Dropbox for super simple sharing. Plus, this one has a competitor stats tool, allowing you a peep at other users’ best performing hashtags. Sneaky but oh-so handy!
Apps for instagram feed layout
Later
iOS | Android | Web
later.com
Later is a much more powerful social media scheduler than some of the other apps we reviewed. It has some great functionality such as the ability to cross-post content on multiple platforms. However if you just want to plan your Instagram feed these added features can bring some unnecessary complexity to the platform.
It does provide an all-in-one solution to your Instagram account from managing your one clickable bio URL with linkin.bio to being able to schedule your Instagram stories on top of regular posts. We also loved it’s ‘first comment’ feature that auto-posts all your hashtags neatly into a comment underneath your post.
One of the best things about Later is it’s media library which enables you to effortlessly source content from a variety of sources to have ready to drop into your feeds.
If you like to plan your posts visually you might find this app a bit cumbersome as you must first schedule a post to see how it would look it in the grid planner. There is however a drag and drop version hidden away in the mobile app under the ‘quick scheduler’ function.
This almost feels like a separate version of the app which enables to you to allocate your preferred posting times each day and quick drop your posts into those slots and rearrange as you see fit.
Post types: Standard ✓ Video ✓ Carousel ✓ Stories ✓
Media Integrations: Files ✓ Camera ✓ Dropbox ✓ Google Drive ✓ Instagram ✓ Websites ✓
Things we liked:
Sophisticated media library that you can pre-populate with great content from various sources
Search and repost feature is amazing, as we feature a lot of different peoples photos on the Creatively Squared Instagram account this means we aren’t losing quality by taking screen shots of the images to share them.
How simple it is to regram content from other accounts and to grab images from your website or blog to share
Easy sync between mobile and desktop apps
You can add other social media accounts. Aside from Instagram, Later also let you schedule posts for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. This is heaven-sent if you want to distribute the same content throughout your other social channels.
Things to consider:
Some aspects of the web app weren’t super intuitive such as drafting a new post. I kept feeling like I was looking for a + or ‘new post’ button to create something
Feed preview in the web app was hard to find as was the drag drop visual planner in the mobile app
No options to edit or crop photos once they are added to the media library
Pricing: Free for one Instagram account and up to 30 posts per month
Planoly
iOS | Android | Web
planoly.com
Planoly is definitely a hot contender for a top all-in-one content planner for Instagram.
The mobile and web app interfaces are well designed and easy to navigate. Both iterations support all the same features and are easy to use in tandem.
Many users will love the added content calendar planning function which is a clever way to mark important dates and make notes about upcoming content – you can even add a colour code to each one. This feature combined with the image placeholder function enables you to start drafting a post even if your image isn’t ready yet.
The discover feature is handy for finding images to repost from Instagram or from free stock sites. Perfect for those to like to integrate aspirational or moodboard style images into their accounts. In the draft section you can play around with the design of different themed grids before integrating them into your feed.
Planoly’s design feels a bit less ‘tech’ and more ‘girlboss’, which we liked but some might not! It is definitely geared towards professional users and we found that a lot of features we only available to those on Business accounts so those with personal accounts may be locked out of a number of functions (primarily due to Instagrams API).
Those in eCommerce will love the ‘Shoplink’ feature which adds Instagrams shopping links on to your scheduled posts.
Post types: Standard ✓ Video ✓ Carousel ✓ Stories ✓
Media Integrations: Files ✓ Camera ✓ Dropbox ✓ Google Drive ✓ Instagram ✓
Things we liked:
Integration with their own stories design app
Content calendar (this could be worth the switch in itself!)
Saved hashtags grouping
What could be better:
No image editing on free version
Pricing: Free for one user and Instagram account for up to 30 posts per month
Plann
iOS | Android | Web
plannthat.com
Plann is a visual Instagram planner with a simple drag and drop interface. Adding new content is a breeze, you can upload directly from your device or via Google Drive or Dropbox, or even import from 3 major royalty-free stock sites for instant content if you’re ever stuck for something to post.
If you like to adjust your photos once they are placed in your grid, Plann allows you to edit, crop and enhance your photos directly from the app. If you want to get even more creative you’ll love their Canva Integrations where you can access your own, or build brand new designs straight from Canva, inside Plann. (Plann mobile app also integrates with Canva Stories App for stories.) This is a feature to watch and might get a lot of people over the line.
Switching between your desktop and mobile is simple and the web app has a well thought out, designer interface. You can even use Plann to cross post your best performing content across Facebook, and LinkedIn automatically.
Post types: Standard ✓ Video ✓ Carousel ✓ Stories ✓ Multi-post Stories ✓
Add media from: Files ✓ Camera ✓ Dropbox ✓ Google Drive ✓ Google Photos ✓ Canva ✓ Pexels ✓ Unsplash ✓ Pixabay ✓
Things we liked:
User friendly and intuitive. You don’t have to spend time watching tutorials. It’s very easy to use.
Drag and drop arrangement and enlarged grid view for planning.
Save hashtags. You can store your favourite collections of hashtags ready to copy and paste straight onto your future posts.
Desktop app is well designed and simple to navigate, with a new mobile app that syncs seamlessly.
Save to camera roll feature. This is helpful if you edit the image within the app but want to save it to your phone for further use.
‘Share to Plann’ from any app on your phone. If you’re managing multiple accounts they’ll help you import directly to the right account for either posts or stories.
Content Calendar. With Plann you’re able to add blog posts, Instagram story takeovers and email newsletters to a calendar view so you’re on top of your entire marketing workflow.
Things to consider:
There is no media library in the mobile app for you to save posts that you aren’t ready to place into your grid yet
The mobile app supports Instagram publishing but does not yet support LinkedIn and Facebook platforms, which are managed on Plann webapp.
Pricing: Free for one Instagram account and up to 30 posts per month
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Preview
iOS | Android
thepreviewapp.com
If you are looking for a super simple app to visually plan and schedule basic posts from your phone – Preview is it. It doesn’t come with all the bells and whistles of the other apps and although there is a desktop version you can not access it from the free version of the app.
It’s unlikely that you’ll need any help navigating your way around but if you do they have some tutorials available in the app.
The free version of the app has unlimited posts (whereas most of it’s competitors are capped at 30 per month)
You can crop and edit your images in app and the supplied filters are surprisingly nice, although you are limited to just 2 packs on the free version.
There’s not really much more to say about Preview aside from it’s a slick looking app that delivers exactly what it came to do and nothing else!
Post types: Standard ✓ Video ✓ Carousel ✓
Media Integrations: Files ✓ Camera ✓ Free Stock Photos ✓
Things we liked:
Easy to log in, simple interface
Saved hashtags grouping
Easy to rearrange content in carousels
What could be better:
Analytics only show the last 7 days
Doesn’t support Instagram stories
You have to manually delete posts once they go live to remove from your grid
Pricing: Free for one user and Instagram account for unlimited posts. Note – Can only access desktop version with Premium plan
Unum
iOS | Android | Web
unum.la
As one of the more creative planning apps on the market we really wanted to love Unum. Unfortunately recent updates have had a detrimental effect on the user experience and due to speed and bugs in the system, the time it took to get started was far longer than with it’s competitors.
Navigating the interface of both the mobile and web app wasn’t very intuitive and it lacked a lot of features and integrations that are supported by other apps on the market.
Visually it has some good features and enables a lot of creative control over the look and feel of your grid. Unum has filters and tools to edit your images in app, as well as some editable templates for creating Instagram stories. You can create multiple versions of your grid and drag drop to arrange the order of your posts. Another feature we liked was the ‘grid shift’ which allows you to toggle the view between your upcoming posts and how the grid will look directly after the next one goes live.
Scheduling seemed like a secondary feature to the visual grid planner and there were no options for auto post. Unum has very basic analytics and you can save drafts and captions such as a recent tags feature for remembering hashtags you use regularly.
Post types: Standard ✓ Stories ✓
Media Integrations: Camera Roll ✓ Pexels ✓ Unsplash ✓ Google Drive (web app only) ✓ Drop Box (web app only) ✓
Things we liked:
Instagram Story templates were a nice feature
Some users will like the option to design an offset grid
Phantom mode for temporarily hiding a post
What could be better:
Didn’t like the big empty grid that came pre-filled with grey squares.
App was a bit buggy and it took ages to sign up connect to our profile which didn’t work at all on the web app
Speed, so so so slow
Conclusion
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