Instagram Now Lets You Share Photos, Reels and Locations via QR Code

Last Updated: August 27, 2022

According to recent news from TechCrunch, you can now share posts and Reels through the Meta-owned social media platform via QR code. The same feature also lets users share their location through Instagram’s searchable Map interface on the app with the same QR code mechanism.

One possible use for this new QR functionality might be marketing campaigns that focus on location-specific venues or events and sales. Brick-and-mortar businesses such as bars and restaurants can also take advantage of QR code sharing to promote their offerings and specific events. More usefully still for just about any user, the QR sharing option lets you share a post to others without having to send them a URL via direct message or comments.

Users who want to give the new feature a spin can simply visit any of their own Reels, photos or location tags through the Instagram app and click the three-dot menu beside any of these to see a QR code sharing option. It’s also possible to use the feature through Instagram’s desktop app by adding “/qr” to the URL of any post. This will generate a QR code.

As a Meta spokesperson explained to TechCrunch, the new individual post-level QR function is being rolled out “To make it easier for people and businesses to share specific content, we recently launched the ability to create QR codes for profiles, tags, locations, reels, and more”.

Before this, Instagram only offered QR sharing for whole personal and organization profiles, but not for specific posts and Reels.

The person who first noticed Instagram’s new sharing method was a developer named Alessandro Paluzzi, who posted about it on his Twitter feed. He’s known for reverse engineering apps to find tidbits about their upcoming updates. Paluzzi picked up on this particular feature way back in March of this year, even though it’s only now publicly available.

For now, we don’t know if Instagram is releasing QR sharing for posts, Reels and locations to all users worldwide or only to select geographical regions.

Instagram’s latest effort may be part of a strategy of staying competitive with growing rivals such as TikTok and the photo-sharing app BeReal, from which the Meta-owned company has copied in the past.

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Stephan Jukic Shotkit Journalist, Writer & Reviewer

Stephan Jukic is a technology and photography journalist and experimental photographer who spends his time living in both Canada and Mexico. He loves cross-cultural street photo exploration and creating fine art photo compositions.