Instagram Brings Its TV App to Samsung Smart TVs in the US

Instagram’s TV app is now on Samsung Smart TVs in the US, the third connected-TV platform the Meta-owned service has reached since December 2025. The rollout, dated June 22, 2026, brings Instagram for TV to Samsung Smart TV models from 2020 onward. With the addition, Instagram says the app now runs on the majority of connected-TV devices in the country.

Bundled with the Samsung launch is a slate of features the company is testing for the living room: interest-based channels, Reels casting from phone to TV, Stories on the big screen, and a horizontal-video section. Instagram also sketched a longer-term plan that includes longer-form creator content, multi-episode series, and live streaming on the TV. Instagram argues the same shift phones drove in short video can repeat on the television, where watching is more often a shared, room-scale activity.

The Samsung Launch

The Samsung integration is restricted to US users at launch, and only on Samsung Smart TVs from the 2020 model year forward. It completes a three-step connected-TV rollout that began with Instagram’s June 22 announcement of the Samsung expansion on Meta’s newsroom. The first version of the app landed on Amazon Fire TV in December 2025, and Google TV followed in February 2026.

With Samsung added, Instagram for TV covers the three connected-TV operating systems the company calls “the majority of connected TV devices in the US.” Each platform pulls a different audience: Fire TV skews toward Amazon’s shopping subscribers, Google TV nests inside Android’s phone-and-watch ecosystem, and Samsung sits on the largest installed base of smart TVs in many US households.

The platform’s footprint now spans the three operating systems that ship with the majority of US living-room screens.

Four Features Built for the Living Room

The Samsung launch is paired with four features Instagram is positioning as living-room-native. The platform argues that watching on TV is a shared activity, and the features are designed to make the phone act as a controller. None of them are finished products.

When the app opens, viewers see channels organized by interest, with topics like comedy, sports, and creator content surfaced up front. The point is to take the friction out of finding something a group can agree on, the same way a streaming app’s row of tiles does.

Casting is the second pillar, and the one feature already live for some users today. Reels and any item from a user’s Saved collection can be sent from the Instagram mobile app to a TV on the same network with a few taps, on Google TV and Fire TV first. Stories from friends and creators also show up inside the TV app for the first time. The original app only showed Reels natively.

A fourth test, a dedicated home for horizontal videos, lets users find content that fits a widescreen without the black bars vertical Reels leave on a TV. Together the four pieces form the platform’s first attempt to put the same scrollable feed that defined Instagram on phones in front of viewers sitting on a couch, watching with family, on a larger screen.

• Interest-based channels. Comedy, sports, and creator content get their own rows on the TV app’s home screen.
• Reels casting. Send a Reel or a Saved video from the mobile app to a Google TV or Fire TV with a few taps.
• Stories on TV. Friend and creator Stories now appear inside the TV app, not just on phones.
• Horizontal video. A dedicated section is being tested for videos shot in landscape, which fill a TV screen better than vertical Reels.

Instagram’s Living-Room Roadmap

Beyond the features shipping now, Instagram is laying out a roadmap aimed at formats the company thinks only the living-room screen can support. Three buckets sit on that roadmap: longer-form creator content, a deliberate departure from the under-90-second Reels that defined the platform’s first push into TV; episodic series that unfold across multiple episodes; and live TV, bringing creator livestreams to the big screen for audiences who want to watch together in real time.

Meta is repositioning Instagram from a phone-native short-video service to a platform that designs for sessions measured in episodes and broadcast hours. TechCrunch framed the move as Instagram “coming for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video” alongside the existing rivalry with TikTok and YouTube. Instagram says it will work closely with creators to figure out what works on a TV before any of these formats roll out broadly, and there is no launch date yet for any of the three.

We’re still in the early stages of understanding what social video looks like on TV. We’ll continue learning from our community and building new ways for people to connect around the content they love.

That line came from Instagram’s announcement on Meta’s newsroom, written by the company as part of the June 22 launch. The same post makes clear the new formats will arrive only after feedback from creators shapes them.

The CTV Numbers Instagram Is Chasing

The Samsung push lands at a moment when short-form video is the fastest-growing slice of connected-TV viewing, and Instagram is not the only one chasing it. YouTube Shorts on TV now accounts for 15% of all US Shorts consumption inside YouTube’s app, according to coverage of the rollout from Social Media Today. The category has shifted from novelty to format in three years.

Globally, the audience is in the billions. YouTube’s TV chief disclosed this month that Shorts alone racks up 2 billion monthly hours on television screens, a figure detailed in a breakdown of YouTube’s TV viewing data. That is the audience Instagram is now chasing into the living room.

Instagram’s argument is that it can plant a flag on the same screen with the same short-form runtime YouTube is using to capture living-room time. Its mobile app is already optimized for it, the recommendation engine is built around Reels, and most US creators already post there. The risk is that it ends up a fourth tab to open and forget, an extra icon on the home screen that rarely gets tapped.

On one side: the sheer volume of Reels being produced daily by creators who already understand the platform. On the other: the trajectory of the company’s earlier CTV efforts, none of which Social Media Today described as having “shown much promise.”

• 15% of all US YouTube Shorts consumption now happens on TVs.
• 2 billion monthly hours of YouTube Shorts are watched on TV screens globally.
• Four years was the lifetime of Instagram’s previous TV app, IGTV, before Meta shut it down.
• 2020 model year is the earliest Samsung TV that runs the new Instagram app.

Has Instagram Tried This Before?

The skepticism is built into the strategy. Instagram tried this before, and its previous IGTV app ran for four years before Meta shut it down, according to Social Media Today. The same outlet noted that Instagram’s past CTV experiments “haven’t shown much promise.”

The new app is a CTV client designed for the larger screen. Casting works through phones already in every viewer’s hand. Stories and horizontal video fill parts of the screen vertical Reels cannot. YouTube’s Shorts-to-TV pipeline has already moved real hours at scale, and Instagram’s recommendation engine now has to compete with YouTube’s on the same screen.

Meta says it will iterate based on community feedback before launching the longer-form, episodic, and live formats. For now, US Samsung owners can open the app today and start scrolling, the same motion that defined Instagram on phones a decade ago. The test is how often viewers reach for the app after sitting down on a couch facing a larger screen.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where is Instagram for TV available now?

As of June 22, 2026, the app runs on Amazon Fire TV devices (since December 2025), Google TV (since February 2026), and Samsung Smart TVs from the 2020 model year forward in the United States.

What features is Instagram testing on the TV app?

Four: interest-based channels that group videos by topic, Reels casting from a phone to a TV, Stories from friends and creators inside the TV app, and a dedicated section for horizontal videos.

Can I cast Reels from my phone to the TV?

Casting works on Google TV and Fire TV devices today. Users can send individual Reels or items from their Saved tab from the mobile app to the TV with a few taps.

When will longer-form and live TV features launch?

Instagram has not announced dates. The company says it is exploring the formats with creators and will roll them out only after that work shapes them.