If you’re reading this, you’re probably a user of both Instagram and Twitter. Maybe someone sent you a link to this article, maybe it was me! In any case, your Twitter feed is full of links to Instagram photos. What if I told you there was a way to automatically show your Instagram photos in Twitter instead? Would you try it?
You can automate the process of making your Instagram photos show up on Twitter with If This Then That (IFTTT). Wikipedia summarizes IFTTT as follows:
IFTTT is a free web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called “applets”, which are triggered based on changes to other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. IFTTT is an abbreviation of “If This Then That”.
Since you already have an Instagram and Twitter account, I’m going to assume you can figure out the process of creating a IFTTT account. You will also need to grant permission to IFTTT to access both your Instagram and Twitter accounts. You can revoke this permission at any time if you’re worried about it. I’ve been using IFTTT for years without any problems or concerns.
Once you have your IFTTT account setup, and you’ve linked your Twitter and Instagram accounts, you will need to look for the IFTTT Applet called Share your Instagram pics as native Twitter photos (or click this link to get there quicker). You will see the applet which will look something like this:
When you click the Turn on button, the Applet will work for a minute, and then show that it is On.
So what did this do? Well, let’s click the gear icon in the upper right of the Applet to check the settings.
The top section of the settings describes what the Applet will do. There’s a button that will turn on (or off) notifications whenever this Applet performs its magic.
The lower section of the sections has a few more options
You can set what gets Tweeted. By default, this is the caption you gave the image in Instagram, and a link to the Instagram post. Note that the caption you give the image is cut off so that the entire tweet is kept to Twitter’s 140 character limit. A copy of the photo you posted on Instagram is copied to your Tweet and posted on Twitter.
Personally, I left these settings at their default values. If I write a longer caption, my Twitter followers can click through to view the full caption on Instagram.
If you changed anything, click Save. That’s it, you’re done…
The next thing you do is change your Instagram posting process. You have to remember to NOT tap the Twitter link on the final page of the Instagram posting process:
If you tap Twitter on this screen, you will end up with two posts on Twitter.
If for some reason you don’t like this Applet, simply come back to your IFTTT account, find the app again, and click the Settings icon. At the bottom of the page there is a Delete button which will remove the app and stop copying your posts from Instagram to Twitter.
If you have multiple Instagram or Twitter accounts, you may need to setup multiple IFTTT accounts to link them the way you want. Each IFTTT account can only have one Twitter and one Instagram account linked.
If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll answer them as best I can.
Brian's Interesting Stuff 