Very soon, your Instagrams will look a bit sharper.
The Verge reported Monday that since the end of last week, the photo-sharing platform has been storing uploaded images in 1,080 by 1,080 pixels -- an upgrade from the much lower resolution of 640 x 640 previously offered.
Instagram spokeswoman Amy Auerbuch confirmed the upgrade to The Huffington Post: "[W]e are gradually rolling out 1,080 on both iOS and Android. Most people should have it."
If app doesn't appear to be displaying your images at this resolution yet, you can find higher-quality versions of your Insta uploads by digging through the web source code for each pic.
To do this, head over to Instagram's web viewer, click on any given photo, access the page's HTML (do this by right-clicking the image and selecting "View Page Source" from the popup menu) and search for URLs ending in ".jpg". The first result should be the one you're looking for. Copy and paste that URL into your browser and enjoy!
The process is a bit annoying, but the images look beautiful.
This update is long overdue. By storing images in 640 x 640, Instagram had been heavily compressing many of its users' uploads -- depending on the smartphone they captured the image with -- into lower-quality pictures.
What's more, many recent smartphones are perfectly capable of displaying high-resolution pictures. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge boasts a 2,560 x 1,440 display, which can handle photos of a much higher quality than Instagram's former 640 x 640.
This post has been updated.