Instagram still not offering Top 9 grid post creation Pic credit: Stockcam/iStockYet another year has passed, and still, Instagram is yet to wake up to the popularity of the ‘Top 9’ grid. Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Wrapped, Retroplay for TikTok, and others gained immense popularity in December 2020. But Instagram users are still at the mercy of third-party, and many-a-times sketchy, alternatives to create their ‘Top 9’ year in review feature.
As the year 2020 draws to an end, several prolific and even casual social media users are busy reflecting and reminiscing. While top platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, TikTok, and others have the facility to grab, understand, and share the metrics for this past year, Instagram users are still stumbling in the dark.
Why is Instagram not offering ‘Top 9’ year review grids?
Instagram is one of the most popular image-sharing social media platforms. Despite Facebook offering a simple way to share videos and images, Instagram’s popularity hasn’t waned.
Many Instagram users will be having their feeds flooded with collages from their friends, family, acquaintances, and influencers. Despite it being very popular, the ‘Top 9’ feature is still missing from Instagram.
And here are the ‘Instagram top 9’ from the four years prior. I swear I draw other stuff than cartoon animals… okay maybe not really pic.twitter.com/Nl3h50AvVX
— Henrieke Goorhuis (@HenriekeDraws) December 31, 2020
The majority of Instagram users surely love putting together the collages to look back on their past year of posts. In fact, the platform already offers practical and easy-to-use grid tools for posting photos to the “story” in different layouts. Needless to add, it has ready and instant access to all the relevant images, data, and statistics.
The image-sharing platform, owned by Facebook, had ample time to witness the insane popularity of Spotify Wrapped. The feature dominated social media platforms in December. Looking at Spotify and Apple Music Wrapped, even TikTok came up with a dedicated app called ‘Retroplay’.
Incidentally, Facebook pioneered the automated aggregation of posts. The platform offers a small video that collates the highlight of the past year without asking, and yet, it is ignoring Instagram’s highly-demanded feature.
How to create Instagram ‘Top 9’ grid post?
Even in 2020, Instagram is yet to offer the Top 9 feature. The lack of such a basic facility forces users to rely on third-party apps. Several of these apps surface around December every year, offering this one service for Instagram.
While there are dozens of apps that offer users Instagram Top 9 year in review, the two most popular recommendations are Top Nine for Instagram app, and Best Nine app for the Apple iPhone users. These apps are available on the Apple App Store.
My top 9 art pieces of 2020 on Instagram!! 💗
Of course the Modeus art was the most liked. XD[ #top9of2020 #artistsoninstagram #rakuenarts #ArtistOnTwitter ] pic.twitter.com/JaKesYHWMv
— ❄Rakuen (Comms OPEN!!✨) (@RakuenArts) December 31, 2020
The first one merely asks for an Instagram username and an email address. Users can enter any junk or burner email id to safeguard the privacy and prevent the bombardment of promotional messages.
The app creates a Top 9 grid but plasters a watermark. Users can remove this watermark with a $1.99 in-app purchase.
The second option doesn’t ask for an email id and even offers the Instagram Top 9 year in review grid without a watermark. However, it shows a lot of ads while creating the same.