Can you delete an Instagram story before 24 hours?

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. But if you want to remove an Instagram story before the time is up, you can certainly do that too.

Here, we’ll show you how to delete an active, archived, and promoted Instagram story.

Can you delete an Instagram story before 24 hours?

Delete an active story

If you created an Instagram story in the last 24 hours, then it’s still active. You can remove it before it disappears by following these steps.

  1. Open Instagram and tap your big profile icon from the top left of the main screen to view your story.
  2. Tap the More button (three dots) on the bottom right.
  3. Select Delete.
  4. Confirm this action by tapping Delete again.

Can you delete an Instagram story before 24 hours?

If you have more than one photo in your story, as in using the Multi-Capture feature, 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 story photos until they’re all deleted.

Note: When you delete a story or post, you can find these in the Recently Deleted section of the Instagram app. So if you decide later to share the story, after all, you can. Take a look at our how-to for reposting from Recently Deleted and how long you have before items are removed permanently.

Delete an archived story

You can move stories that disappear to the archives automatically. This lets you reshare them if you like. But if you have a story in the archive that you want to remove completely, do the following.

  1. Go to your profile and tap the Menu icon on the top right.
  2. Select Archive.
  3. Tap the arrow at the top and choose Stories Archive if necessary.
  4. Pick the story you want to remove and tap the More button on the bottom right.
  5. Select Delete and confirm by tapping Delete once more.

Can you delete an Instagram story before 24 hours?

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 for using the Instagram archives.

Delete a promoted story

If you have a business account, you can delete a 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.

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.

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 and create a new one. Plus, you can remove those unwanted older stories from the archive if needed.

Read next:

Can you delete an Instagram story early?

Instagram and Instagram Lite app for Android Go to your story by tapping Your story at the top of Feed. Tap More in the bottom right of the photo or video you'd like to delete. Tap Delete.

Does deleting an Instagram story delete it for everyone?

If someone happened to be viewing the story while you deleted it, it won't disappear from their screen right away, but they won't be able to view it again.

How do you archive your Instagram stories before 24 hours?

Instagram Lite app for Android Tap or your profile picture in the bottom right to go to your profile. Tap in the top right, then tap Settings. Tap Privacy, then tap Story. Next to Save story to Archive, tap .

Are stories deleted after 24 hours?

My Story đź“– Snapchat servers are designed to automatically delete Snaps you add to your Story 24 hours after they post. You can delete a Snap from My Story at any time.