Instagram

Schedule and Post on Instagram

How to Schedule and Publish on Instagram with Metricool

Posting on Instagram efficiently can make a big difference in your social media strategy. With Metricool, you can schedule and auto-publish your content as long as your account is a business or creator profile. However, in some cases, manual publishing via notifications is required.

✅ Quick Summary

Format

Auto-Publishing

Exceptions (Require Manual Publishing)

Post

✅

Carousels with videos over 60s

Reel / Trial Reel

✅

Audio not available in library, interactive stickers

Story

✅

Links, interactive stickers

⚠️ Instagram features that cannot be auto-published:

  • Stories: Links, mentions, and interactive stickers (polls, questions, quizzes, sliders, countdowns) must be posted manually via notification.

  • Reels: You can add audio to your Reels directly from Metricool's library. If the audio you want is not available in our library or you need interactive stickers, you'll need to publish manually via notification.
    👉 Solution: Disable the Autopublish toggle when scheduling. At publish time, you'll receive a notification that downloads the media and opens Instagram so you can add the audio or stickers natively. See the full manual publishing guide.

In this article:

👀 Things to Consider

  • Posting Limit: Instagram's API allows a maximum of 50 posts (feed posts, Reels, and stories) every 24 hours.

  • Restrictions when connecting with Instagram credentials: Some features are not available if you connect your account directly with Instagram credentials. Check this article to learn about the differences between connection types and the options available for each one.

  • Video Format: Instagram only allows individual videos to be published as Reels via its API. From Metricool, all videos will be sent as Reels (not as feed posts). You can still include videos in carousels, as long as their aspect ratio is between 3:4 and 16:9.

Formats & Available Options

Metricool allows you to schedule and auto-publish the main Instagram formats, with some exceptions based on API restrictions.

  • Posts: Appear in the feed and can include an image, video, or carousel (up to 10 images or videos).

  • Reels: Vertical videos, up to 15 minutes, with the option to also appear in the feed.

  • Trial Reels: lets you test how a Reel performs before publishing it permanently to your feed. See How to Publish Instagram Trial Reels in Metricool for more details.

  • Stories: Vertical ephemeral content that disappears after 24 hours.

📝 Note: To save the stories published from Metricool, you must have the story archive enabled in your Instagram account settings. You can activate this feature from the Instagram app: Profile > Menu ☰ > Archive > Settings > Save story to archive.

Option

Posts

Reels

Stories

Add a location

✅

✅

❌

Promote post

✅

✅

❌

Hashtag search (Premium only)

✅

✅

❌

Tag people (Not available in video carousels)

✅

✅

❌

Tag products

✅

✅

❌

Add Alt Text

✅

❌

❌

Mention accounts with @

✅

✅

❌

Add a video thumbnail

✅

✅

❌

Add first comment

✅

❌

❌

Add collaborators (Up to 5)

✅

✅

❌

Add audio

❌

✅

❌

Tag audio

❌

✅

❌

📝 Notes

  • Character limit: 2,200 per post.

  • # Limit: 30 per post.

Although up to 30 hashtags can be included per post through the API, Instagram recommends prioritizing relevant hashtags and avoiding excessive use (for example, between 3 and 5).

Auto-publishing

With Metricool, you can schedule and auto-post to your Instagram account is a professional business or creator account. Stories that include links, stickers... are currently not supported in automatic posting.

Likewise, images and videos (up to 15 minutes) must meet certain requirements to automatically post successfully. You can check the specifications here.
Exceptionally, videos included in carousels should not exceed a duration of 60 seconds.

When you create the post, make sure you select "Feed Post", "Reels" or "Stories" and that the auto-publish button is enabled.

Instagram Presets

  • Show Reel on Feed: Activate this option to display your reels in the feed.

  • Add Collaborator: Add up to 5 collaborators.
    The collaborator must approve the request in the Instagram app. Once approved, both accounts will appear as authors of the post. Stories are excluded.
    If the collaborator does not approve the request, the post will be published without the collaboration.
    Due to Instagram API limitation, private or age-restricted accounts are not eligible as collaborators Here you can check the steps to verify if your account has age restrictions set.

💡 To learn more, check out our blog post "How to Create Collaborative Posts on Instagram". Remember that collaborative posts will only appear if your account is the creator of the content. To view information about a post where you are a collaborator, you can add the content creator's account as a competitor.

  • Boost this post: Increase the reach of your posts by promoting them. See more details here.

Multimedia Options

Click on the three dots in the attachment to see all the options:

  • Edit Video/Image: Edit your multimedia content; expand details in this post.

  • Tag People: Tagged accounts must be public on Instagram. Refer to the post "Mention and Tag Other Accounts" for more information (not supported for video carousels or stories).

  • Tag Products: Tag products on Instagram; see the step-by-step here.

  • Upload video thumbnail: Import a cover for your video.

  • Select Cover: Choose a frame from the video as the cover.

  • Add audio: Add audio to your Reels directly from Metricool's library. You can select from available audio options or upload your own audio file.

  • Tag audio: Edit the displayed name for your Reel's audio. By default, it shows as "Original audio". Note: If you add audio using the "Add audio" option, this audio tag won't be applied.

If the audio you want is not available in Metricool's library or you need to add interactive stickers, disable the Autopublish option and publish manually via notification. This way, you'll receive a notification that downloads the media and opens Instagram so you can add these elements natively. About the cover, you can choose it within the video, or upload a file (the image recommended size is 1080px x 1800px). The option is available on the three dots icon on the thumbnail of the attached video.

Manual Publishing

The publication is manual and works via notifications in these cases:

  • Stories that include links, mentions, stickers...

  • Reels with audio not available in Metricool's library or interactive stickers

  • Any post that does not meet the requirements for autopublishing

When creating the content, select the type of post in the dropdown menu and ensure the auto-publish button is toggled off.

Manual posting works through notifications that you can set up to receive in your email or mobile device (recommended option). This way, when it's time to post, and you click on the notification, the image/s will be downloaded to your gallery, and the text will be automatically copied to the clipboard and redirect you to the Instagram app.

In this tutorial you can see in detail how to set up notifications.

To set up notifications on your mobile device, you first need to download our app, available on iOS and Android, and log in.

👉 See the full step-by-step guide to manually publishing on Instagram here.

Feed Preview

This feature will help you visualize the design of your Instagram Feed with the scheduled posts in the calendar.

From Planning, click on the three dots and, in the dropdown menu, select "Preview feed". Then, choose the view: iOS (vertical) or Android/Web (square).

  • Content Information
    The information button is displayed on scheduled content, allowing you to easily distinguish scheduled content from already published content (which does not include the button).
    Click on the information button of the post to see the scheduled date and the status of the content (pending or draft).
    To hide/show the icon, click on the information icon on the right.

The opacity filter visually indicates that the content is in draft.

  • Edit the content: To edit the post, click on the pencil button.

Additionally, you can zoom in or out on the preview with the magnifying glass icons on the right.

Image & Video Requirements

✓ Images:

  • Format: JPEG or PNG

  • Size: up to 8 MB

  • Aspect ratio: between 3:4 and 1.91:1

  • Minimum width: 320 pixels (scaled to minimum if necessary).

  • Maximum width: 1440 pixels (scaled down to the maximum if necessary).

  • Height: Varies, depending on width and aspect ratio.

Image size:

  • Maximum Columns (horizontal pixels): 1920

  • Minimum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 3:4

  • Maximum aspect ratio [cols / rows]: 16:9

Instagram does not support ProPhoto RGB, the standard color profile in Photoshop and Lightroom. If used, it may affect the color in the published images.

✓ Reels:

  • Size : up to 500 MB

  • Duration: from 3 seconds up to 15 minutes

  • Container: MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.

  • Audio codec: AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).

  • Video codec: H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.

  • Audio bit rate: 128kbps

  • Video bit rate: VBR, 25Mbps max.

  • Frame rate: 23-60 FPS. - Frame rate: 23-60 FPS.

Video size:

  • Maximum columns (horizontal pixels): 1920

  • Aspect ratio: 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank spaces.

Instagram only allows individual videos to be published as Reels via its API. From Metricool, all videos will be sent as Reels (not as feed posts). You can still include videos in carousels, as long as their aspect ratio is between 4:5 and 16:9.

✓ Stories:

  • Story Image Specifications:
    Format: JPEG
    File size: 8 MB maximum.
    Aspect ratio: We recommended 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank space
    Color Space: sRGB. Images using other color spaces will have their color spaces converted to sRGB

  • Story Video Specifications
    Container: MOV or MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), no edit lists, moov atom at the front of the file.
    Audio codec: AAC, 48khz sample rate maximum, 1 or 2 channels (mono or stereo).
    Video codec: H264, progressive scan, closed GOP, 4:2:0 chroma subsampling.
    Frame rate: 23-60 FPS.
    Picture size:
    Maximum columns (horizontal pixels): 1920
    Required aspect ratio is between 0.1:1 and 10:1 but we recommend 9:16 to avoid cropping or blank space
    Video bitrate: VBR, 25Mbps maximum
    Audio bitrate: 128kbps
    Duration: 60 seconds maximum, 3 seconds minimum
    File size: 100MB maximum

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