# What are Instagram Highlights? Canonical: https://postmesh.app/glossary/instagram-highlights By PostMesh team. Published 2026-10-31; updated 2026-10-31. Instagram Highlights are collections of your past stories pinned as circles on your profile, below your bio. A story normally disappears after 24 hours, but stories you add to a highlight stay visible until you remove them. ## What Instagram Highlights are A highlight is a saved set of stories that lives on your profile. Each one shows as a small circle with a cover image and a short name, sitting in a row under your [bio](/glossary/bio). When someone taps it, the stories inside play back one after another, just like a story would, except they don't expire. That's the whole point. Instagram's help center says photos and videos you share to your story disappear from Feed, your profile and Direct after 24 hours, unless you add them as a highlight. Stories you add to a highlight stay visible until you remove them, even after the original story is gone. Highlights turn something built to vanish into a permanent part of your profile. People use them like chapters or folders. A cafe might have highlights called Menu, Hours and Reviews. A traveler might have one per trip. A creator might keep FAQ, Collabs and Behind the scenes. For a visitor, highlights are often the fastest way to learn what an account is about without scrolling the whole grid. ## When Instagram introduced highlights Instagram announced Stories Highlights on its blog on December 5, 2017, together with Stories Archive, in Instagram version 25 for iOS and Android. The announcement said there hadn't been an easy way to keep stories around for more than 24 hours, so highlights gave them a home in a new section of the profile below the bio. It also said highlights stay on your profile until you remove them and that you could have as many as you like. The archive was the other half of the launch. From then on, stories saved automatically to a private Stories Archive when they expired, so you could build highlights from anything you'd shared in the past, not just today's stories. Only you can see your archive. - You post a story: It shows in the story tray, on your profile ring and in Direct - Within 24 hours: Add it to a highlight from the story itself, or let it run - After 24 hours: The story leaves Feed, your profile and Direct, and saves to your Stories Archive - Any time later: Pick it from the archive to add to a new or existing highlight - Until you remove it: A highlighted story stays on your profile *Based on Instagram's help pages on how long stories stay visible, Stories Archive and highlights.* ## How to create a highlight on Instagram Highlights are made in the Instagram app for iPhone, iPad or Android. These are the iPhone steps from Instagram's help center: 1. Tap Profile or your profile picture in the bottom right 2. Tap New, or Story highlight if you don't see New 3. Select the story or stories to include, then tap Next 4. Tap Edit cover to choose a cover photo 5. Enter a name for the highlight 6. Tap Add in the top right *The new highlight appears as a circle on your profile, below your bio.* To add a story that's still live, open it from your profile picture, tap More in the bottom right, tap Highlight and pick the highlight it belongs in. To add older stories to an existing highlight, tap and hold the highlight on your profile and choose Edit highlight. ## How to edit or delete a highlight - Edit a highlight: on your profile, tap and hold it, then tap Edit Highlight to add more photos or videos. - Remove one story: open the highlight, find the story, tap More, then Remove from Highlight. - Delete a whole highlight: tap and hold it, tap Delete Highlight, then Delete again to confirm. - Delete several at once: go through Your activity, as shown below, then tap Select, choose the highlights and tap Delete. Instagram: Profile › Menu › Your activity › Highlights › Select *Your activity is below How you use Instagram in the menu. You can sort and filter by date before deleting.* Deleting a highlight removes it from your profile. The stories inside still exist in your Stories Archive if the archive is on, so you can rebuild a highlight later. If you've turned off Save story to archive in your archive settings, you lose that safety net, and older stories won't be there to pick from. ## Keep Stories Archive on so you can build highlights later Every highlight is built from your archive, so the archive setting decides how much you have to work with. Instagram saves stories you share to Stories Archive by default, and you can turn it off at any time. If you've switched it off and want it back, Instagram's steps are: go to your profile, tap Menu, tap Your activity below How you use Instagram, tap Archived, tap Options in the top right, then Settings, and switch on Save story to archive. You don't have to wait 24 hours either. Tap Options on a live story and choose Archive to move it there straight away. From the archive, you can also save a story to your phone with Save photo or Save video, which is a sensible backup for anything that holds a highlight together, like a menu or a price list you'd hate to recreate. ## Who can see your highlights Highlights follow your story settings. Instagram's help center puts it simply: those you've allowed to see your story can also see your highlights. So the audience settings you use for stories, including whether your account is private, carry over to everything you pin to your profile. If you wouldn't want someone to see a story today, don't count on a highlight being any more private. Creators with Instagram Subscriptions get one extra option: an exclusive highlight only subscribers can watch. It's switched on under Professional dashboard, then Subscriptions, then Content settings, with the toggle Auto-add to exclusive highlight. Instagram notes that this highlight holds 30 stories, and adding a new one deletes the oldest. > Instagram says Stories Archive and Highlights aren't available for all accounts. It also warns that some archived stories are changed to save storage, such as photo stories with music or GIF stickers, which can lose their music. Keep that in mind when building a highlight from very old stories. ## What to put in your highlights Good highlights answer the questions a new visitor has. A [link in bio](/glossary/link-in-bio) sends people away from your profile; highlights keep them there and show them more. A few illustrative setups: - A local business: Menu, Hours, Reviews, Events, How to order. - A freelancer: Work, Process, Clients, Prices, Contact. - A creator: Start here, FAQ, Gear, Collabs, Best of. - A traveler: one highlight per trip, named by place and year. - A shop: New in, Restock, Sizing, Shipping, Customer photos. - A personal account: Friends, Dog, Concerts, Food. Keep names short so they fit under the circle, and use covers that look like a set. If you want a highlight people return to, update it: a Reviews highlight that stops in 2023 says something you didn't mean to. Stories saved only for [Close Friends](/glossary/close-friends) are a separate audience, so think about which stories belong on a profile anyone can browse. Since highlights are made of stories, your stories need to look good first. Our guides on [why Instagram stories look blurry](/blog/why-is-my-instagram-story-blurry) and [social media image sizes](/blog/social-media-image-sizes) cover the dimensions that hold up. PostMesh publishes photos and Reels rather than stories, as its [Instagram page](/platform/instagram) lists, so highlights stay something you build in the app. ## Highlight covers and names The cover and the name are all a visitor sees before tapping, so they do the selling. Instagram lets you pick a cover photo with Edit cover when you create the highlight. Because the cover shows inside a small circle, keep the subject in the middle and skip fine detail or small text that won't survive the crop. Many accounts use simple icons or a single color per topic so the row reads as one set. For names, one or two words works best: Menu beats Our full menu and prices. If a highlight answers questions you get in [DMs](/glossary/dm) every week, like shipping times or booking steps, name it after the question so people find it before they message you. ## Highlights vs stories vs posts **Story** - Disappears from view after 24 hours - Story tray, profile ring and Direct - Saves to your private archive **Highlight** - Stays until you remove it - A circle on your profile, below your bio - Visible to anyone allowed to see your story **Feed post or reel** - Stays on your profile grid - Shown in followers' feeds - Has its own likes and comments *Highlights sit between a story and a post: built from stories, kept like posts.* Pick the format by how long the content should matter. A one-day sale is a story. A permanent menu or a set of answers to common questions is a highlight. Something you want people to like, share and find later is a feed post or a [reel](/glossary/reel). Our [post vs story vs reel guide](/blog/instagram-post-vs-story-vs-reel) goes deeper on that choice, and [Instagram Notes](/glossary/instagram-notes) cover the even shorter end: a line of text that lasts a day. ## Questions ### Do Instagram Highlights expire? No. Instagram says stories you add to a highlight stay visible until you remove them, even after the original story disappears. ### Can people see who viewed my highlights? Instagram's help pages on highlights don't describe a viewer list for them, so don't count on seeing who watched a highlight. ### How many highlights can I have? Instagram's 2017 launch post said you could have as many highlights as you like. Exclusive subscriber highlights are the exception, holding 30 stories each. ### Can I add an old story to a highlight? Yes, if Stories Archive is on. Tap and hold a highlight, choose Edit highlight, and pick stories from your archive. ### Why can't I create a highlight? Instagram says Stories Archive and Highlights aren't available for all accounts. Highlights are also made in the mobile app, so check you're on iPhone, iPad or Android with the latest version. ### Does deleting a highlight delete the stories? It removes the highlight from your profile. The stories remain in your Stories Archive if you have the archive turned on. ## Related terms - [Close Friends](https://postmesh.app/glossary/close-friends) - [Instagram Notes](https://postmesh.app/glossary/instagram-notes) - [Reel](https://postmesh.app/glossary/reel) - [Bio](https://postmesh.app/glossary/bio) - [Link in bio](https://postmesh.app/glossary/link-in-bio) ## Sources - [Instagram Help Center: Add a story to your Story Highlights](https://help.instagram.com/813938898787367) - [Instagram Help Center: Edit or delete a highlight on Instagram](https://help.instagram.com/369113370200735) - [Instagram Help Center: How long Instagram stories remain visible](https://help.instagram.com/1729008150678239) - [Instagram Help Center: Archive Instagram Stories or turn off Stories Archive](https://help.instagram.com/1935507879999791) - [Instagram Help Center: Where your Instagram story appears](https://help.instagram.com/636136463228627) - [Instagram Help Center: Create exclusive content for Instagram Subscriptions](https://help.instagram.com/564128501937546) - [Instagram Blog: Introducing Stories Highlights and Stories Archive (December 5, 2017)](https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-stories-highlights-and-stories-archive)