After dominating mobile screens for the last decade, Meta is officially making its move to capture the biggest screen in your house. Announced yesterday, the company has begun testing a dedicated Instagram for TV app, designed to transform the vertical Reels experience into a “lean-back” viewing experience for the living room.
While the app is launching as a limited test, it signals a major shift in how Meta wants us to consume short-form video, directly challenging YouTube’s dominance on smart TVs.
A new way to watch Instagram Reels
We have known for a while that video—specifically Reels—is the primary driver of growth for Instagram. However, the mobile app has always been a solitary experience. With Instagram for TV, Meta is betting that people want to watch viral clips together.
The interface looks to be a significant departure from the mobile app. Instead of the infinite vertical scroll we are used to, the TV app organizes content into Channels.
According to Meta, these channels are grouped by interest, such as new music, hidden travel gems, sports highlights, and trending moments. The idea is to replicate the feeling of traditional channel surfing. Once you select a channel, Reels play automatically with full sound, removing the need to constantly click or swipe.
Setup and features
For those in the test region using Amazon Fire TV, the setup process utilizes a handshake with the mobile app. Users can sign in via the “Settings” bookmark on their phone.
Crucially for shared households, the app supports up to five profiles. This allows different family members to have personalized algorithms on the same TV without messing up each other’s recommendations. You can even create a standalone account specifically for the TV if you prefer a generic “living room” feed. The app also lets you search for your favorite creators and content straight from your TV.
Meta has also teased a roadmap of features that aren’t live yet but are in exploration:
- Phone as remote: Using your mobile device to control the TV feed.
- Shared feeds: A curated stream specifically for watching with friends.
- Intuitive channel surfing: Better navigation controls for the remote.
Safety and teen accounts
Meta is proactively addressing safety concerns with this launch. Because the TV is often in a communal space, the content guidelines are stricter. The app defaults to a PG-13 rating system, meaning some of the edgier content you might find on your private mobile feed won’t appear on the big screen.
For Kenyan parents who have recently set up Teen Accounts, the integration here is seamless. If a teen logs into the TV app, their time spent watching Reels on the big screen counts toward their overall daily usage limit. The TV app will also respect sleep mode settings and content restrictions.
When is it coming to Kenya?
As is standard with major Meta rollouts, this is currently a US-exclusive test available only on Amazon Fire TV devices.
However, Meta has explicitly stated that as they learn from this test, they will “expand to more devices and countries.” Given the popularity of Android TV and Google TV (and their forks) in the Kenyan market via devices like the Xiaomi Mi Box or Hisense/TCL TVs, we expect an Android TV version to follow once the Fire TV beta creates a stable foundation.
For now, if you are in Kenya, you’ll have to stick to casting your phone screen to your TV, but a native app experience is definitely on the horizon.
