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Instagram Users Will Soon Be Able to Switch Between Accounts With One Tap

An update coming later this week will finally let users switch between different Instagram accounts without having to log out.

Instagram will soon fix its single biggest problem.

The company said Monday afternoon that the next version of its app, to be released later this week for Android and iOS, will finally let users switch between different accounts without having to log out first. Users can simply go into the app's account settings to add the additional accounts, and can switch between accounts by tapping on their username in their profile. The app will support up to five different accounts at a time.

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Why would you need multiple Instagram accounts per phone? Plenty of reasons: people who, say, manage a company account in addition to their personal one now no longer need to logout then log back in just to switch between profiles. (This helps me personally since I manage my dog's Instagram account.) There's also the issue of "Finstagram," or "fake Instagram," which is for people who elect to have multiple Instagram accounts as a kind of operational security: There's your "real" Instagram and your "fake" where you post content you wouldn't necessarily want associated with your real account.

Image: Google

Users have been begging Instagram for the ability to easily switch between multiple accounts for years now, with Google Trends data, which depicts relative popularity of search terms over time, suggesting that people began to search with increased frequency for the ability to switch between different accounts dating back to 2013 (Instagram was first released in 2010). Interest in the topic exploded in late 2015 when the first reports surfaced suggested that Instagram was experimenting with fast account switching.

This is a tremendous coup for Instagram users who've had to suffer the indignity of logging out and then logging back in again merely to switch between their different accounts, and it's great to see the company listening to feedback.

Now excuse me while I try to win fake internet points for my dog.