Flume Review: Instagram Desktop App For Mac

Instagram is a great platform to share and explore. Besides the seamless app experience on mobile, Instagram also provides a web version for browsing. However, for posting, you are only allowed to do it on your phone.

What if you want to post to Instagram from your Mac? You need a third-party app like Flume — a gorgeous and beautiful Instagram app that helps solve those pain points we Instagram users may face:

• How to post on Instagram and edit content from a computer?
• How to reply to DM messages more efficiently while working?
• How to repost posts more efficiently?

You don’t need multiple apps to do those different tasks, Flume is right there for you. Let’s dive into the app and see what it has to offer.

What is Flume?

Flume is an Instagram desktop client for Mac. It can do almost everything that you can do on Instagram on your phone. Apart from stories and live, you can also post new content, repost, browse, search, comment, like photos, and more — those are unable to do from the web app of Instagram.

Simply put, Flume makes using Instagram on your Mac a breeze, while saving you time and keeping you more productive.

How does Flume Work?

Once you log into Flume, you’ll find its main interface has two simple parts: feed and control panel. The control panel allows you to choose the functions you need, for example, post content, or switch to different view models.

1. Post Content From Mac

One of the greatest features of Flume is it provides an easy way to post directly from your Mac, both photos and videos. If this is what you want to achieve, you’ll love Flume as it will save you lots of hassles switching between different devices.

Once you upload a photo or video, Flume also allows you to do some quick edits to your media files, not just limited to posting.

As you can see from the screenshot above, you can apply different filters, adjust the details of the photo, tag people, add a caption, etc. For me, I especially like the caption feature here as you get a clear overview of the work counts and tag numbers. It’s much more powerful than the mobile Instagram app.

2. Repost Photos

Unlike retweets on Twitter, Instagram doesn’t seem to make it easy for users to repost photos. Often you’ll need extra software or repost account to do that. But in Flume, we can just right-click and select “Repost photo”. That’s it! Sounds incredible, right? Personally, I love this feature a lot!

What’s more, you can get pretty nice repost content automatically, including repost tag, and the original publisher will get tagged in the post. You can see how it looks from the screenshot below. Kudos to the Flume team for making the repost feature so awesome.

3. Browse Posts

Browsing posts is another cool feature in Flume. The app provides two different layouts: a single column and 3×3 grid. Scrolling up and down is a similar experience, just like you’re using Instagram on your phone.

But you can find Flume is more focused on the photos, no words or comments showed up at all on the mainstream. You won’t know any detailed information about the post unless you click on the photo. What’s a great experience that is!

Another way I like about Flume is how it shows which post is AD, not in a sneaky way. This is absolutely sweet for the users. Also, you can easily recognize videos and carousel posts.

4. Direct Message

DM is also a super important function in Flume. Since Instagram has become an important platform for branding, millions of companies and online stores are present on Instagram because they can easily get connected and communicate with their target audiences.

Direct message in Flume has the same function as Instagram, and it’s a lot easier to operate on the Mac desktop. You can reply to any message from others or start a new conversation.

Price & Platform Compatibility

As of this writing, Flume is currently available for macOS only. You can get the software from their official website. Flume has both a Free and Pro version.

With Flume Pro, you can upload photos or videos from Mac and add multiple accounts. These additional features can be unlocked by upgrading to Flume Pro at $10 only, a one-time fee.

Is Flume Worth It?

Instagram is an app mostly used on mobile devices. But there are circumstances in which people actually need or prefer to use it on a computer, especially Mac users who want to keep all things in one place.

If Instagram has become part of your work or part of your life, you will have fewer hassles when you use third-party Instagram apps like Flume. It’s way easier to send bulk messages, upload posts with long content, add tags, repost, and more. Flume Pro is also quite affordable, costing only 10 bucks.

Personally, I enjoyed using Flume very much and it’s more like a productivity app for me. I highly recommend it.