Instagram expands TV app to Google TV to challenge YouTube

Instagram is expanding its dedicated television application, Instagram for TV, to Google TV devices in the U.S. This expansion marks a continued push into the living room, occurring two months after the application made its debut on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025. By launching on Google TV, Instagram is broadening the reach of its television application, allowing users to view content directly on their television screens. While the application originally launched as a way to expand the viewing of Reels—Instagram’s short-form video feature—beyond mobile devices, users can now also browse posts from their Instagram feeds directly on their television screens.

The expansion is a strategic effort to better compete with YouTube, which currently dominates the television viewing space. Instagram likely hopes to encourage users to shift their viewing habits to its television application while watching content on the couch, similar to flipping through traditional television channels. This strategy follows moves by other competitors, such as TikTok, which also maintains a television application.

To accommodate household viewing, the application offers a personalized experience based on user preferences. It features Reels—Instagram’s short-form video feature—customized to the content and creators that users enjoy on the platform. This personalization ensures that the content displayed on the television aligns with the user’s existing interests on the mobile platform. These Reels are organized into channels and categories based on topics such as comedy, music, and lifestyle. To make the viewing experience more seamless, Reels play automatically within the application, which means users do not have to keep scrolling to watch the next video. The Instagram for TV application also includes interactive features, allowing users to like videos, view comments, and reshare Reels directly from their screens.

Additionally, the application supports account management for multiple users. To set up the system, users can pair the television application with their mobile Instagram application. This setup allows households to add up to five accounts within a single home, or they can choose to establish an entirely new account specifically for television viewing purposes.

Why it matters

By bringing Reels to the television, Instagram is attempting to capture screen time currently dominated by YouTube, signaling a shift in how the platform wants users to consume short-form video content.