What are Instagram Highlights?

Instagram introduced Stories Highlights and Stories Archive together in a post dated 5 December 2017. Before that, a Story was gone after 24 hours. Highlights let you group Stories you have shared and feature them on your profile, in a section below your bio.

The post describes the original steps. You tap the “New” circle at the far left, choose Stories from your archive, pick a cover and give the highlight a name. It then appears as a circle that plays as a stand-alone Story when someone taps it. The post says highlights stay until you remove them, that you could have as many as you wanted, and that you could edit or remove one by tapping and holding it on your profile.

That is a launch announcement, and it is nearly nine years old. Instagram’s Help Center now gives the steps: on your profile in the iPhone app tap New (or Story highlight), select the stories, tap Next, tap Edit cover to choose a cover and enter a name, then tap Add. It says highlights stay visible until you remove them, even after the original story has gone, and that people you’ve allowed to see your story can also see your highlights. The articles we read state no limit on how many you can have.

The same post explains where the material comes from. Stories were set to save automatically to a private Stories Archive when they expire, and only you can see archived Stories. You could switch off auto-archiving in your profile settings. From the archive you can open any Story and add it to a highlight, to your Story again, or share it as a post.

So a Highlight is the public, chosen part of something that was already being kept privately. If you switch off the archive, check what that does to the Stories you meant to feature, because a highlight is built from saved Stories.

The circles sit directly under your bio, so a new visitor often sees them before the first post. That makes them a handy place for answers people ask repeatedly.

• Prices, services and how to order.
• Shipping, returns or opening hours.
• Customer messages or results, with permission.
• Behind the scenes, for people who want to know who you are.

Tip: Give each highlight a short, plain name and a cover that matches the others. Visitors scan the row in a second and tap the one that answers their question.