Instagram Highlights are collections of past stories pinned under your bio, and they stay on your profile until you remove them, long after the original stories have expired. For a creator, each highlight should answer one question a new visitor has: what you post, where your links go, how brands can work with you or what members get. Keep Stories Archive switched on, because with it off your stories are deleted when they expire and can't be added to a highlight later, and give every highlight a date to be reviewed.
The text fields above the row are covered in our field-by-field bio builder, and if your profile points people to an OnlyFans page, our Instagram profile conversion checklist covers the whole path from profile to link. This guide is about the highlights row itself.
How highlights work
Instagram's help page on adding stories to highlights says highlights are created in the Instagram app for Android, iPhone or iPad. From your profile you tap New, or Story highlight if New isn't shown, give the highlight a name, pick one or more stories and choose a cover. To add to an existing highlight, you open it, choose Edit and select more stories. The page adds two points that shape everything else: highlighted stories stay visible until you remove them, and anyone you've allowed to see your story can also see your highlights.
Instagram's page on editing or deleting a highlight covers the rest: open the highlight, tap Options, then Edit to rename it, unselect stories or add new ones, or delete a single story from inside the highlight. One caveat sits on the archive help page: Stories Archive and Highlights aren't available for all accounts, so if the New button never appears, the feature may simply not be enabled for yours.
Keep Stories Archive on
Highlights are built from your archive. Instagram's Stories Archive page says stories are saved there automatically, that the setting lives under Archiving and downloading as Save story to archive, and that if you turn the archive off, any stories you share from then on are deleted after 24 hours. A story that was never archived can't become a highlight next month.
The same page warns that some stories change when they are saved. To manage storage, Instagram may mute music or freeze videos and GIFs, the changes are permanent, and they can affect photo stories that use the music or GIF stickers; stories reshared from the archive won't include whatever was removed. In practice, a highlight built from a photo story with a song sticker may play silently. Our guide to Instagram music by account type explains which audio you can rely on.
Two more archive facts are worth knowing. You can download any archived story from the archive itself, which is the easiest way to keep your own copy of every story in your highlights. And Instagram's page on how long stories remain visible says publicly shared stories, including archived ones, are used to improve AI at Meta unless you delete them from the archive or make your account private. Decide whether that matters to you before treating the archive as a permanent library.
The highlight plan template
Plan the row the way a shop plans its window: every highlight earns its place by answering something a first-time visitor wants to know. Copy the table, keep the rows that fit your work and fill in your own dates.
| Highlight name | Visitor question it answers | Stories to keep | Retire a story when | Refresh date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Start here | Who is this, and what will I see if I follow? | A short introduction, a sample of each regular format and how often you post | Your niche, format or schedule changes | Write yours here |
| Links | Where should I go next? | Current link-sticker stories pointing at your main destinations | A link breaks or the offer behind it ends | Write yours here |
| Work with me | How do brands book you, and what have you made with them? | Partnership stories you have permission to keep up, with their paid partnership labels, plus a contact route | A partner asks you to take it down or the work is out of date | Write yours here |
| FAQ | What does everyone ask in my DMs? | One answer per story for the questions that come up again and again | A question stops arriving or the answer changes | Write yours here |
| Behind the scenes | What is it actually like to follow this creator? | Process, set-up and everyday stories that show your style | It no longer looks like the work you make now | Write yours here |
| Members | What do paying subscribers get? | A plain description of what is included and where to sign up, inside Instagram's rules | Your offer or price changes | Write yours here |
Fewer, current highlights are easier for a visitor to scan than a long row of stale ones. If a Members or Links highlight points to adult content, check our Instagram policy map for adult creators first, and build link stories with the steps in our Instagram story link sticker guide.
Match highlights to how visitors arrive
People reach your profile with different questions depending on where they came from, and the highlight they open first should meet that question. Think through your main entry points and decide which highlight each one needs:
- From a reel that travelled: they liked one video and want to know whether the rest is similar, so Start here should show your regular formats rather than your biggest moment.
- From a collab or a tag: they know the other creator, not you, so a quick introduction and Behind the scenes stories do the work.
- From a brand or agency search: they want evidence of past partnerships and a way to get in touch, which is what Work with me is for.
- From your own link in another app: they already know you and want the next step, so keep Links current and easy to find.
- From a DM conversation: they asked something specific, and an FAQ highlight lets you answer once and point to it.
If one entry point brings most of your new visitors, put the highlight that serves it where it is seen first, and judge every other highlight by whether it helps that visitor or gets in their way. The format choice behind each story is covered in our guide to Instagram Reels, posts and stories.
Cover spec checklist
Choosing a cover is the last step in creating a highlight, and you can change it later through Edit. Instagram doesn't publish cover dimensions, so these checks are about how covers read on a phone rather than about pixel counts:
- Design for a small circle: keep the symbol or face in the centre with clear space around it, because the edges are cropped away.
- Use one visual system across every cover, such as the same background family, line weight or photo treatment.
- Check contrast against both light and dark mode, since the profile background changes with each viewer's setting.
- Leave words off the cover when they only repeat the highlight name printed underneath.
- Make covers from your own photos or from assets whose licence covers social media use.
- Keep the source files and a note of fonts and colours, so the next highlight matches the rest.
- Strip out anything that gives away a location, such as a street sign, a shop front or the view from a window.
- Preview the whole row on a small phone before you publish a new cover.
Naming and order
Names sit under each cover and get cut short on small screens if they run long, so short, plain labels read best. Instagram's help pages describe naming, adding and removing, but none of the pages we checked describes a control for setting the order of the row. Check your profile after each edit, and record the order you see in your plan so you notice when it shifts.
Privacy check before you pin a story
A story meant for a day becomes a permanent profile item once it is highlighted, so give old stories a second look before you add them:
- Location stickers and tagged places, which point to where you were; our guide to Instagram Map and location privacy covers how tagged content surfaces.
- Faces of friends, crew or family who agreed to a day on your story but not to a permanent spot on your profile.
- Screens showing messages, emails, notifications or order numbers.
- Details around your home, such as mail, the street outside or a car registration.
- Offers, prices or dates that no longer apply.
A refresh routine
- On each refresh date, open every highlight as a visitor would see it, from a second account if you have one.
- Remove stories that fail the “retire when” test in your plan.
- Add your strongest recent stories from the archive, downloading a copy of each as you go.
- Tap every link sticker in the Links highlight and fix anything that has broken.
- Update covers that no longer match the rest of the row.
- Write the next refresh date into the plan.
Limitations of this guide
Highlights and Stories Archive aren't available on every account, and Instagram's help pages don't document cover sizes, how the row is ordered or any cap on how many highlights or stories you can keep. The archive can permanently alter some stories, so a highlight may not look exactly as the story did on the day.
The plan template is an editorial tool, not an Instagram feature, and it can't tell you which highlights visitors will open. This guide reflects Instagram's help pages as they read on 1 October 2026.