How to Edit Story Highlights on Instagram

Your Instagram Story Highlights are prime real estate on your profile, acting as a curated trailer for your brand, business, or personal account. They give visitors a snapshot of who you are, what you offer, and what they can expect from your content. Knowing how to edit them effectively is essential for keeping your profile fresh, organized, and on-brand. This guide will walk you through every step of editing your Instagram Story Highlights, from changing the cover and title to adding and removing stories, so you can make the best first impression possible.

What Are Instagram Story Highlights and Why Do They Matter?

Unlike regular Instagram Stories that vanish after 24 hours, Highlights are collections of your past stories that you choose to save and feature permanently on your profile, right below your bio. Think of them as the subject dividers in a binder or the main navigation menu on a website. They're one of the first things people see when they land on your profile, giving you a powerful opportunity to guide their experience.

For brands and creators, Highlights serve several important functions:

• Showcase Your Best Content: Group your most valuable or popular stories into easily accessible categories.
• Tell Your Brand Story: Use an "About" or "Our Story" Highlight to introduce yourself and what you stand for.
• Drive Sales: Create Highlights for specific products, services, or collections, complete with swipe-up links (if available).
• Answer Common Questions: A dedicated "FAQ" Highlight can save you time and provide immediate value to new followers.
• Display Social Proof: Collect user-generated content, testimonials, and positive reviews in a "Loved By You" or "Reviews" Highlight.

Because they are so visible, keeping your Highlights updated and aesthetically pleasing is a simple way to elevate your entire Instagram presence. An organized set of Highlights signals that you’re active, professional, and thoughtful about your audience's experience.

How to Edit Your Instagram Highlights: A Step-by-Step Guide

Editing a Highlight is a straightforward process once you know where to look. You can change its name, cover photo, and the stories it contains. Let’s break down exactly how to do it.

Editing a Highlight's Name and Cover

Your Highlight's cover and name are vital first impressions. A clean, branded cover image is much more appealing than a random, pixelated story frame, and a clear, concise title tells people exactly what they'll find inside. If you need to freshen things up, here’s how.

1. Go to Your Profile: Open the Instagram app and navigate to your main profile page.
2. Press and Hold the Highlight: Find the Highlight you want to edit and long-press on its circular icon. A menu will pop up from the bottom of the screen.
3. Select “Edit Highlight”: From the pop-up menu, tap on Edit Highlight. This will take you to the editing screen.
4. Change the Title: At the top of the editing screen, you’ll see the current name in a text field. Tap this field and type a new name for your Highlight. Keep it short and descriptive - you only have about 15 characters before it gets cut off.
5. Change the Cover: Just above the name, tap the Edit Cover link. You have two options here:
   • Choose from a story: You can scroll through the existing stories within your Highlight and select one to be the new cover. Use your finger to drag and resize the frame to position it perfectly within the circle. This is quick but often doesn't look as professional.
   • Upload a custom image: Tap the small image icon on the far left of the filmstrip at the bottom. This will open your phone’s camera roll, allowing you to select a pre-made image to use as your cover. This is the preferred method for creating a consistent, branded look.
6. Save Your Changes: Once you’re happy with the new name and cover, tap Done in the top-right corner. Instagram will update the Highlight on your profile immediately.

Adding and Removing Stories Within a Highlight

Over time, you'll want to add new, relevant content to your Highlights or remove outdated information. Maybe you have a new glowing customer review to add to your "Testimonials" Highlight, or you need to remove an expired promotion from your "Deals" Highlight.

Your Instagram Story Archive is the key here. Every story you post is automatically saved to your private archive (unless you've turned this feature off), creating a library of content you can pull from at any time.

Here’s how to add and remove stories from an existing Highlight:

1. Access the Edit Screen: Just as before, navigate to your profile, long-press the Highlight you want to update, and select Edit Highlight.
2. Go to the “Stories” Tab: You’ll land on the "Selected" tab, which shows the stories currently in your Highlight. Tap the Stories tab next to it to view your entire story archive, organized by date with the most recent stories at the top.
3. Add Stories to the Highlight: Scroll through your archive to find the stories you want to add. Tap the empty circle in the corner of a story to select it. A blue checkmark will appear, and the story will now be included in the Highlight. You can select as many as you want.
4. Remove Stories from the Highlight: To remove a story, simply find it in the archive (it will have a blue checkmark) and tap it to deselect it. The checkmark will disappear. You can also switch back to the "Selected" tab to see only the stories currently in the Highlight and deselect them from there, which is sometimes easier.
5. Save Your Changes: After you’ve made your additions and removals, tap Done. Your Highlight is now updated with the latest content.

Pro Tip: Remember that each Highlight can hold a maximum of 100 stories. If you try to add a 101st story, Instagram will prompt you to remove an older one first.

Best Practices for Creating Strategic &, Beautiful Highlights

Just knowing how to edit your Highlights is only half the battle. To make them truly effective, you need a strategy behind what you're showing and how it looks. Here are some pointers to elevate your Highlight game.

Design On-Brand Custom Covers

Custom Highlight covers are the secret to a polished and professional-looking Instagram profile. They create a cohesive visual theme that reinforces your brand identity.

• Use a Consistent Style: Design all your covers using the same brand colors, fonts, or icon style. This creates a neat, organized look. Tools like Canva offer thousands of templates specifically for Instagram Story Highlight covers.
• Keep Icons Simple and Clear: Use simple, universally understood icons that represent the content within each Highlight (e.g., a shopping bag for "Shop," a question mark for "FAQ," a camera for "BTS").
• Center Your Design: Instagram crops cover images into a circle. Make sure your icon or main design element is centered so it doesn't get cut off. A good working size is 1080x1920 pixels, with the main graphic in the center square.

Organize Your Highlights Strategically

Don't just create Highlights for the sake of it. Think about your audience and what information would be most useful or interesting to them when they first visit your profile.

Ideas for Businesses:

• About Us: Your story, your mission, and the faces behind the brand.
• Products/Services: Showcase your offerings in organized categories.
• Reviews: Display your best customer testimonials and social proof.
• FAQ: Answer frequently asked questions about shipping, usage, or policies.
• Behind the Scenes (BTS): Show how your products are made or what a day in the office looks like.

Ideas for Creators &, Influencers:

• Travel: Group stories by destination (e.g., "Paris," "Bali ‘24").
• Tutorials: Share know-how through makeup demos, cooking guides, or DIY projects.
• Q&,A: Save your best answers from "Ask Me Anything" sessions.
• Outfits/Looks: Link to your styles so followers can shop them easily.
• Press/Features: Showcase any articles or collaborations you've been featured in.

Try to limit yourself to 5-7 key Highlights to avoid cluttering your profile. Remember that only the first 4-5 are visible without scrolling, so place your most important categories at the beginning.

How to Delete an Instagram Story Highlight

Sometimes a Highlight just isn't relevant anymore and you need to remove it completely. Deleting a Highlight is permanent, but it’s important to know that it does not delete the stories from your archive. They will still be saved privately for you to use later.

1. Navigate to Your Profile.
2. Press and hold on the Highlight you wish to remove.
3. From the pop-up menu, select Delete Highlight.
4. A confirmation pop-up will appear. Tap Delete again to permanently remove the Highlight from your profile.

And just like that, it's gone. This is a great way to clean up your profile after a seasonal promotion, a past event, or if you're rebranding and starting fresh.

Final Thoughts

Editing your Instagram Story Highlights is a simple but high-impact way to control your profile's narrative and provide immediate value to visitors. By creating strategic categories, designing on-brand covers, and keeping the content inside fresh, you can transform your profile from a simple photo grid into a dynamic and helpful resource for your audience.

Creating compelling content for your Stories - the very things that will one day become your Highlights - starts with good planning. At Postbase, we designed a clean, modern content calendar that helps you plan and schedule your posts across all your social platforms in one visual dashboard. It helps you see the gaps in your strategy and ensures you have a steady stream of valuable content ready to go, giving you more freedom to focus on building an engaging and unforgettable Instagram presence.

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