Learn how to delete an Instagram story from your profile, from the archive, or from the recently deleted section. You can also delete a promoted story if you have a business account.
You know that any story you create on Instagram is only visible for 24 hours. After that, it disappears from your profile. If you have the setting enabled, those stories can be moved to your Stories Archive so you can revisit and reshare them again or delete them for good.
You aren’t stuck with an Instagram story on your profile that didn’t turn out quite as you had hoped. You can easily delete an active story before the time is up and create a new one. Additionally, you can remove those unwanted older stories from the archive or recently deleted sections if needed.
Also see: How to delete a single photo or video from your Instagram carousel post
Delete an active Instagram story
If you created an Instagram story in the last 24 hours, then it’s still active. You can remove it before it disappears.
1) Open Instagram and tap your big profile icon from the top left of the main screen to view your story.
2) Tap the three dots button on the bottom right.
3) Select Delete story and confirm this action by tapping Delete.
Note:
- If you have more than one photo or video in your story, the above steps will not delete the entire story. They will only delete that particular photo in your story. Follow the same process to remove the additional stories until they’re all deleted.
- When you delete a story or post, you can find these in the Recently Deleted section of the Instagram app. Take a look at our tutorial for restoring your deleted Instagram posts and stories and how long you have before items are removed permanently.
Delete an archived story
If you go to Instagram Settings > Archiving and downloading, you have the option to turn on Save story to archive. After this, the stories that disappear after 24 hours are saved in the archives. This lets you reshare them if you like.
Note: If you delete an active Instagram story, it will not be moved to your archive. Only stories that disappear on their own go to the Stories Archive when time’s up. For more, check out our tutorial on using Instagram archives.
If you have a story in the archive that you want to remove completely, you can delete it from there.
1) Open Instagram and go to your profile screen. Now, tap the menu button from the upper right corner and select Archive on the next screen.
2) Tap the arrow at the top and choose Stories archive if necessary.
3) Select the story you want to remove, tap the three dots button on the bottom right, and hit Delete story. Now, confirm by tapping Delete.
Delete a recently deleted story
Stories that you manually delete before 24 hours or stories you delete from the Archive section go to the Recently Deleted section, where they stay for the next 30 days. If you want to permanently remove a deleted media, you will have to delete it again from this section.
1) Go to your Instagram profile screen and tap the menu icon from the top right corner.
2) Tap Your activity > Recently deleted.
3) Go to the stories section.
4) Select a deleted story and then tap More > Delete to remove it permanently. You won’t be able to recover this media again, provided that the image or video is not saved locally to your phone’s photo library.
Delete a promoted story
If you have a business account, you can delete a boosted or promoted story. But you can only do so after you delete the promotion, even if the promotion is over.
1) Go to your profile and choose Promotions.
2) Tap View Insights below the promotion you need to remove.
3) Scroll down and tap Delete Promotion.
4) Once you remove the promotion, follow the first set of steps in this how-to to delete the story.
For more information or help with your business account, go to the Instagram Help Center for this topic. You can click the Business Help Center link from there if necessary.
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