Instagram Unveils New Data-Saving Feature on Android

To ensure uninterrupted functioning of the app in areas of low networks, Facebook-owned photo-messaging app Instagram on Tuesday announced a data-saver feature for Android users.

The feature would neither pre-load videos nor download high-resolution images, unless the user chooses, giving people the ability to control their data usage on Instagram and increase the speed for loading images.

"With this data saver feature, we're hoping for an uninterrupted Instagram experience in slow network areas, which in turn will increase people's interactions with their friends and family," Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships, Facebook India, said in a statement.

The feature has been added as part of the app settings under the "account" and "cellular data use" option.

The data-saver feature would be available globally for Android users and would roll out slowly over the course of a week, Instagram said.

Earlier this week, Instagram suffered a major global outage that hindered app logins, page refreshes, commenting on posts and uploading content on the platform.

Users started experiencing issues with Instagram at 11.30pm ET (9am IST Tuesday). According to Down Detector, users in India, US, UK, South America, Japan and Australia were subject to the outages, news website Deadline reported on Monday.

Since Instagram did not officially release a statement about the outage, it remains unclear what may have triggered it.