> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.letmepost.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# instagram.media.mime_allowed

> Instagram is JPEG-only for photos. PNG, WebP, HEIC, and GIF will all fail with opaque IG errors.

## What it checks

For images: `mimeType === "image/jpeg"`. **JPEG only**, no exceptions.
For videos: `mimeType ∈ { video/mp4, video/quicktime }`.

The mime is sniffed from the resolved bytes, not trusted from the file extension.

## Why JPEG-only for images

Meta's Instagram container endpoint will accept a `image/png` URL but produces a `code 100, error subcode 2207003` (or similar) at container creation time. Same for WebP, HEIC, GIF. The only mime IG actually publishes through the photo path is JPEG.

Catching this locally with a clear rule + remediation saves you the round-trip and the opaque error.

## Failure response

```json theme={"system"}
{
  "error": {
    "code": "preflight_failed",
    "rule": "instagram.media.mime_allowed",
    "platform": "instagram",
    "message": "Image mime 'image/png' is not accepted by Instagram (JPEG only).",
    "remediation": "Re-encode to JPEG. Instagram's container endpoint rejects PNG, WebP, HEIC, and GIF on the photo path."
  }
}
```

## Remediation

Re-encode to JPEG:

```sh theme={"system"}
# ImageMagick
magick input.png -quality 85 output.jpg

# sharp (Node)
await sharp(input).jpeg({ quality: 85 }).toFile("output.jpg");
```

If your asset is a transparent PNG, IG won't render the transparency anyway — flatten onto a background of your choice.

For videos, re-encode to mp4 with H.264 + AAC (the codec subset IG accepts inside an mp4 container):

```sh theme={"system"}
ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -movflags +faststart output.mp4
```

## Upstream documentation

The 2207003 / 2207004 subcode family is undocumented in Meta's developer docs but consistently observable. The empirical mapping is what we encode.

## Related

* [`instagram.media.image_size_max`](/preflight/instagram-media-image_size_max)
* [`instagram.media.video_size_max`](/preflight/instagram-media-video_size_max)
* [`threads.media.mime_allowed`](/preflight/threads-media-mime_allowed) — Threads is more permissive (jpeg/png/webp).