As popular as Instagram is, one has to wonder why there is still no native Instagram app for the iPad. You can download the iPhone version of Instagram to it, but it looks very ugly and doesn’t deserve to be on there. Instead, iPad users have to resort to third party apps if they want a better Instagram experience. I’ve tried a few apps, and most of the time, they work pretty well. One such app I recently discovered is Pictacular. Pictacular is an Instagram viewer for the iPad that allows you to do pretty much everything you can do in the official Instagram app and more, but like all third party apps, uploading a photo to Instagram is not permitted.

The main thing that attracted me to Pictacular is the way the app presents Instagram. Unlike Instagram where you only see one photo at a time on the main timeline feed and have to scroll to each photo, Pictacular shows photos in three columns with the caption and comments under each photo in their own little picture frames. Each frame differ in size depending on how long the caption is and how long the comments are. Speaking of comments, the app only shows you the 3 latest comments available for the image no matter how many actual comments there may be. At the moment, I don’t see any way of viewing them all with this app. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way of commenting on a photo either, only liking it. If you tap on a photo, it will bring up an enlarged view of the photo in which you also have the option of sharing the photo on Pintrest, Facebook, or Twitter. You can even swipe left or right on the enlarged view to flip through the photos as well.

If you tap on someones name, it will bring up their profile page which is laid out the same way, 3 columns. Here, you can also view a person’s name, and profile descripion as well as how many photos and followers, as well as how many people they are following. There’s also a “promote” button on here which seems to be a way to give users shoutouts of some sort.

Although I did mention a few things Pictacular can’t do, there are tons of things it can do that Instagram doesn’t. For starters, it’s possible to have the app check for new followers as well as any followers who many have unfollowed you. There’s also a “Discover” tab that has a ton of different categories that you can choose from to explore. Categories include brands, celebrities, sports, fashion, and more. This is a terrific way of exploring Instagram without having to follow a ton of random accounts of people you don’t know.

I’d definitely check out Pictacular if you own an iPad. It makes viewing Instagram photos “prettier” than trying to use the official iPhone version of the app on your iPad, though you’ll still need it if you want to upload photos. Pictacular is currently free, but I’m not sure how long that will last.

App Store Link: Pictacular
Version: 2.4
Developer: Firesnake Labs
Price: Free
Compatible Devices: iPad. Requires iOS 6.0 or later.