Instagram Grid Maker: Split One Picture Into Posts

Instagram's profile grid used square tiles for years. After a test that Engadget covered in August 2024, Instagram switched the grid to taller rectangles in January 2025. Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, explained the change in an Instagram Story and said most photos and videos uploaded to Instagram are vertical, as the Inquirer reported.

The new tile is 3:4. That number comes from grid tools and guides such as Planoly's guide, not from an Instagram help page. Instagram's photo resolution page does accept photos from 1.91:1 to 3:4, which at a width of 1080 pixels means a height up to 1440. A 1080 x 1440 post has the same shape as one grid tile, so the grid shows it whole.

This is why old puzzle feeds broke. A grid made of square tiles now shows each square with its sides cut off, so the seams no longer meet. A grid maker that still cuts squares, or plain 4:5 tiles with no margins, has the same problem.

3:4 tiles, 1080 x 1440, are the simple answer: each post has the shape of one grid tile and shows whole. The catch is posting. The Instagram app takes 3:4, but the Graph API that scheduling tools publish through takes images only from 4:5 to 1.91:1. A 3:4 tile sent through a scheduler has to be padded or cropped to 4:5 first, and then the puzzle stops lining up.

4:5 tiles, 1080 x 1350, get around that. Planoly's guide says the grid crops a 4:5 post to 3:4, 1013 x 1350 pixels. Grid tools that add margins, this one included, assume that crop is taken from the middle, which hides about 34 pixels at each side. The grid maker fills those hidden strips with the edge of the neighboring tile, so the seams meet in the grid and each post still looks whole when someone opens it. If Instagram offers to adjust the grid preview while you post, leave it centered.

Pick 3:4 if you will post by hand from your phone and want the tallest possible posts. Pick 4:5 if a scheduling tool will post them, or if you are not sure.

Instagram puts every new post at the top left of your grid and pushes the rest along. So the tile you post first ends up at the bottom right, and the top left tile has to go last. The grid maker numbers the tiles that way and names the files to match: post 01 first, then 02, and so on up to 09 for a 3 x 3 grid.

Post the whole set in one sitting or on a schedule, but in order. Until the last tile is up, the grid looks scrambled, which some accounts use as a teaser. Afterwards, post in threes to keep the picture whole: a single new post shifts every tile one place and breaks the rows.

Since June 2026 you can rearrange posts on your profile without deleting them. Press and hold a post on your grid, choose Reorder grid, and drag it into place, as MacRumors reported. It works in the iPhone and Android apps, visitors see the new order right away, and pinned posts stay at the top.

That makes a puzzle grid far less risky than it used to be. Posted a tile out of order, or want to slip a new post in without breaking the rows? Move it. You still need the tiles cut correctly, which is what the grid maker is for.

Switch the tool to Swipe Carousel to split a wide picture, like a panorama or a long design, into 2 to 10 slides that join up as people swipe. Instagram allows up to 20 photos and videos in one carousel, and the shape you pick applies to every slide, so the tool makes all slides the same size.

Choose 4:5 for the most screen space in the feed, square for a classic look, or 3:4 if you post from the app. The same rule as the grid applies: scheduling tools publish carousel slides from 4:5 to 1.91:1 through the Graph API, so 3:4 slides are for the app only. Slide 1 is the one people see first, so put the hook there.

We ran the grid maker on 4 November 2026 with a generated 3240 x 1440 test picture. As one row of 3:4 tiles it made three 1080 x 1440 JPGs, and each matched its third of the original to within 2 brightness steps out of 255 on average, which is JPEG noise. As one row of 4:5 tiles it made three 1080 x 1350 JPGs. Where neighboring tiles overlap, in a strip 68 pixels wide, they matched to within 0.2 to 1.3 steps out of 255 on average, which is JPEG noise; two strips that should not match differed by 115. Post 01, the one to post first, was the right hand third, as it should be. Three 4:5 carousel slides from the same picture came to a 246 KB ZIP.

Each tile is drawn straight from your original at full size and saved with the browser's own image export, so nothing is uploaded and the tool never needs one huge canvas, which iPhones limit. What it doesn't do: add text, make grids wider than three posts, or post for you.

For single posts, the Instagram post size tool resizes to 4:5, 3:4 or square and shows the grid crop. Reels and their covers go through the Instagram Reel size converter, and Stories through the story size tool. The carousel maker designs whole carousels in your brand, and the hashtag generator picks the five tags Instagram now allows. Every network's sizes are in the social media image sizes guide.

A puzzle grid is nine posts that have to go out in the right order, often over a few days. Spreadcast is built for that: upload the 4:5 tiles, give each a time on one calendar, and it publishes them to Instagram in that order, with a caption it can write for each. It also designs regular posts and carousels in your brand, so the feed keeps going after the grid is up.

The grid maker stays free with nothing to sign up for. Spreadcast is free to try, and publishing comes with the paid plans on the pricing page. Use the 4:5 tiles for this; Instagram's publishing API does not take 3:4.