Tired of not being able to see Instagram pics on Twitter? IFTTT is the perfect solution

A lot of people use Twitter’s native apps online, like Twitter.com and Tweetdeck and also Twitter for iPhone, Android etc

As I’m on a PC and not a Mac I personally find Tweetdeck quite useful, and for my mobile and Tablet experience I use Tweetbot. The reason I don’t use Twitter’s native apps has a lot to do with inline image viewing or more specifically Instagram.

The most recent update to Twitter’s mobile apps (iOS at least) has introduced inline image previews like most other third party Twitter apps. This has made not being able to see Instagram previews even more frustrating. Why?

You see after the spat between the two, (Twitter didn’t buy Instagram and Facebook did), Facebook/Instagram has revoked Twitter’s access (API) to provide inline image viewing for Instagram photo’s and videos. Which I think kind of sucks, and which is why I use Tweetbot (and for various other reasons too).

Here’s an example where of an Instagram photo shared through Twitter where you can see no inline image

I wondered what those grooves in the roof/ceiling of the Peugeot 2008. http://t.co/CppYMPugOl

— and lucky (@PluckyLuke) June 21, 2014

Instagram is probably the most popular photo sharing service and as such my Twitter, and maybe yours too, is full of photos shared through the service. There is a way around this though, and it’s dead simple.

Enter IFTTT (If This Then That)

Bascially the premiss behind IFTTT is that once you’ve connected one of your favourite services (and there are many), when using one it triggers another. It’s really cool. Setting up two triggers is called a recipe and the variations must number in the millions. For example:

I’ve set a recipe that when I take an Instagram photo it saves it to a specific folder in Dropbox – helps to keep my Instagram pics in one place – and I can access them quickly from my computer.

So back to our Instagram/Twitter inline image preview problem. It’s really simple to create a new recipe on IFTTT which allows you, when you’ve taken a photo in Instagram, to post it to Twitter through Twitter’s own image service. This then allows everyone on Twitter who uses Twitter’s native apps to see your photo inline, instead of having to open Instagram in your browser. Perhaps insignificant, but it makes a difference.

Here’s how:

Let’s make a new recipe

Next you simply select Instagram as trigger and select “Any new photo by you” – the ‘this’ trigger in the recipe

Once you’ve done that you can then select Twitter and click on “Post a tweet with image” – the ‘that’ trigger in the recipe

Make sure you click ‘Create recipe’ and that’s it.

Next time you share a photo through Instagram it will automatically send it to Twitter as a Tweet with an image through pic.twitter.com

Everyone using Twitter native apps like Twitter.com, Tweetdeck, Twitter for iPhone/Android etc will be able to see it as inline image.

Here’s a photo I posted through Instagram viewed in Tweetdeck

Ned's got new wheels. V and I approve pic.twitter.com/YnO74Mf5dK

— and lucky (@PluckyLuke) June 22, 2014

Hope you find this useful.

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This article by Luke Preston originally appeared PluckyLuke and is republished with permission.