A feed that looks intentional. Not chaotic.

For v1, the shipping installer runs on macOS with Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, M4) only. Intel Macs and Windows are not supported by the bundled binary.

Windows and Intel Mac support is on the roadmap if there's enough demand. Tell us if you need either - demand drives priority.

Those apps run on your phone. The workflow is: export from Lightroom, transfer to your phone, upload into the planner, arrange the order. Want to swap a photo? Round trip back to Lightroom for another export-and-transfer cycle.

Instagram Grid Planner plans the grid from inside Lightroom, before you export anything. Pick a sort, lock the sequence, then export only the photos you're posting - already numbered for upload.

Anything Lightroom can render - RAW (.ARW, .CR2, .NEF, .DNG, .RAF), JPEG, TIFF. Renders go through Lightroom so your develop edits are baked into the preview the planner uses.

Yes - Lightroom is generating an edited preview of each photo, which can take a minute or two on a full RAW selection. Subsequent runs reuse the cache and are near-instant.

Press R for Reset, or 1/2/3 to switch between the three sort modes. Drag tiles individually to fine-tune. Your original Lightroom selection isn't modified - the planner only reads it.

Start with Smooth Flow - it's the right call most of the time. If your set has 2-3 distinct color families and you want them to live in chunks, try Cluster. If you're going for a colorful, energetic feed, try Hue Wheel. Each is one tap to try, so you can compare in seconds.

Yes. Select a few photos, group them into a carousel, then reorder the slides or pick the cover in a quick editor - up to 20 per post. Your grid shows just the cover, and on export each carousel's photos are named to stay together and in order (07-1_, 07-2_…). It's a full feed planner, carousels included.

Yes. Select the photos, click Design carousel, and pick a layout: a landscape spread across two slides, the next photo peeking in, film-strip rows, gallery-style rows with white borders that never crop, panoramas, or a collage on every slide. Every layout is previewed with your own photos. You can zoom and reposition each photo, choose 3:4, 4:5 or square slides, set the border and background colour, and swipe through the result on a phone-sized preview. Export writes the finished slides, numbered in upload order with the rest of your grid. No Photoshop or Canva step.

Yes. Instagram moved its profile grid from square to a taller 3:4 crop in 2025. The planner previews that exact crop, so the layout you arrange is what visitors actually see. By default the export is cropped to match, so the feed you planned is the feed people get. Untick Crop to grid in the export dialog if you'd rather keep the original shape and let Instagram do the cropping.

Yes. Library > Plug-in Extras > Smart Pick looks at everything in the collection or folder you're viewing - hundreds of photos is fine - and picks the number you ask for, choosing the set that fits together best by colour. It skips frames shot within a minute of each other (or any gap from a second to a day), leaves out soft and blown-out frames, and never picks a rejected photo. Filter the view to your starred photos first if you only want those. Only the chosen photos get rendered, so a 600-photo session takes about a minute. The result opens as a normal grid: sort it, drag it, swap a tile out, export.

Yes. Instagram picks the middle of every photo for its 3:4 tile, which is why a landscape often loses the part that mattered. Hover a tile, click the crop button, and slide the photo left, right, up or down until the composition sits right. The tile updates live, and the export uses the same framing - no more checking on your phone and coming back to Lightroom.

Yes. Open the crop panel on any photo and pick 2, 3, 4, 6 or 9 tiles. A row of three suits a panorama, a 3×3 block turns a hero shot into a full screen. You frame it once, see it sitting in the grid next to your regular posts and carousels, and export cuts the slices for you - named 07_name_slice1of3 and so on, in upload order. The whole feed, mixed however you like, planned in one place.

Turn off Crop to grid and set No crop to white, black or a blurred fill. Photos taller than 4:5 or wider than 1.91:1 (the range Instagram shows uncropped) get padded onto a safe canvas instead of trimmed; everything in between is already safe and is left alone.

No. Nothing about your photos changes - not your edits, not your ratings, not your originals, not your catalog. The planner only reads. It renders previews and exports renamed JPEGs to a new folder you choose. That's it.

JPEG, quality 85 by default (visually transparent). Adjustable from 60-95 in the export dialog. Long edge defaults to 2048px (the largest Instagram keeps) but you can change it. Crops and slices are cut from the full-resolution render, then resized.

Up to 200, but the sweet spot is 9-30 - the size of an actual Instagram feed plan. Smart Pick can look through up to 2,000 photos to choose the ones that go in.

Yes - the planner stays open across catalog switches. Add photos from one catalog, switch in Lightroom, add more from another, and they merge into the same grid. Useful if you keep your work split across catalogs (clients, years, projects).

No. The planner runs entirely on your own Mac. Nothing is uploaded anywhere unless you explicitly export and share. See our Privacy Policy for details.

No. Instagram closed direct posting to third-party apps years ago, so no Lightroom plugin publishes for you - Grid Planner owns the planning half (sequence, preview, export in order) and hands the numbered files to your phone or scheduler. The honest rundown of every option is in Lightroom Instagram plugin: what still works in 2026.

Yes - 30-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. If it is not right for you for any reason, email us within 30 days of purchase and we will refund you in full. We would rather you be happy than keep a sale. Full terms on the Terms of Service page.