The change meant moving through a feed had to be done by swiping horizontally rather than vertically.
Almost as soon as the change was made, users took to Twitter to complain and demand the return of the familiar up-and-down scrolling method.
The unwelcome update - which was likened to Tinder - was live for about an hour before it was rolled back.
In a tweet, Instagram's head of product Adam Mosseri said: "Sorry about that, this was supposed to be a very small test but we went broader than we anticipated."