It was just a bug, folks. By Alex Perry on April 21, 2026.
Have your Instagram posts been turning black and white without your consent? You’re not alone. According to Engadget, some users on Facebook and presumably elsewhere have complained that photos uploaded to the Instagram app in color were being automatically turned black and white during the uploading process. Instagram confirmed its existence, explained the problem, and claimed it had already been fixed.
“Earlier today, a technical issue caused some HDR photos to appear incorrectly as black-and-white for a subset of accounts,” Instagram told Engadget, before saying the problem was already being fixed. According to the spokesperson, anyone still experiencing the problem should wait a few hours for the photos to return to their original state.
If you want to avoid this in the future, you can turn off HDR photos on an iPhone. By default, HDR is on automatically, but you can go to Settings > Camera and turn off Auto HDR to prevent HDR-related mishaps.
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Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable covering video games and consumer tech. He has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops. He is a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.