How to Add Highlights on Instagram: Full Guide (2026)

Quick Answer: 3 Ways to Add a Highlight

There are three routes, and they all end in the same place on your profile:

1. From an active story. While your story is still live, open it and tap Highlight (the heart icon) at the bottom of the screen. Pick an existing highlight or tap New, name it, and tap Add.
2. From your story archive. Open any expired story in your archive and tap Highlight. This is the route for stories that are older than 24 hours.
3. From your profile. Tap the + New circle under your bio, select one or more stories from the archive grid, tap Next, choose a cover and name, and tap Done.

All three rely on the story archive. If archiving is off, expired stories are gone and only routes one and three (with whatever is still live) will work. Turn it on under Settings › Archiving and downloading › Save story to archive.

Adding Highlights From the Story Archive (Android and iPhone)

The archive is where most highlights come from, because it holds every story you've posted since archiving was switched on. The steps are almost the same on both platforms:

On iPhone

1. Go to your profile and tap the menu (three lines) in the top-right corner.
2. Tap Archive. If you see posts, tap the title at the top and switch to Stories archive.
3. Open the story you want and tap Highlight at the bottom.
4. Choose a highlight, or tap New to start one, then tap Add.

On Android

1. Open your profile, tap the menu icon, then Archive.
2. Use the drop-down at the top to make sure Stories archive is selected.
3. Tap a story, tap Highlight, and add it to an existing or new highlight.

To add several stories at once, use the + New circle on your profile instead. It shows the archive as a grid with selection circles, which is much faster when you're building a highlight from a month of content. If you'd rather put an old story back in front of followers for another day, our guide on re-sharing stories from your archive covers that route.

Making Highlights Without Posting a New Story

Instagram only lets you put stories into highlights, so anything in a highlight must have been a story at some point. You don't have to post something new, though:

• Build from the archive. Every story you've ever posted with archiving on is still available. Use + New on your profile and pick older stories. Nothing is re-shared to your followers' story tray.
• Use the 24-hour rule. Once a story is more than 24 hours old, it only exists in your archive. Adding it to a highlight doesn't put it back in anyone's tray, so it's the quietest way to add content.
• Plan ahead. If you want a cover-style story (for example, a price list or FAQ card) that you don't want to push to followers, post it at a quiet time and add it to the highlight straight away. It sits in the tray for 24 hours, then lives only in the highlight.

One trap: stories shared only to your Close Friends list stay limited to that list inside a highlight too. That's useful for private collections, but it won't make a story public on your profile.

Highlights are also a second chance for your stories to be seen, because every tap on a highlight from a profile visitor counts as a view. If your stories are a key sales channel, see how our story view packages for Canadian accounts fit alongside highlights. And for content from other accounts, our guide on resharing other people's stories explains how to get it into your own story first.

Highlight Covers: Size, Circle Crop and Changing a Cover

A cover is the small circle that sits above the highlight's name. By default Instagram uses a frame from one of the stories inside it, but a custom cover makes the row look deliberate.

• Size. Design on a 1080 × 1920 px canvas (the standard story size), so the image never looks pixelated.
• Circle crop. Only the centre of the image shows in the circle. Keep your icon or initials inside a central area of roughly 400–500 px, with plenty of padding around it.
• Consistency. Use the same background colour and icon style on every cover so the row reads as one set.

You can change a cover without posting it as a story. Open the highlight, tap More (three dots), choose Edit highlight, then Edit cover, and tap the gallery icon to pick an image from your phone. Adjust the crop and tap Done. If you need matching designs, the free story template maker is a quick way to produce a full set at the right size. To make covers inside the app instead, our guide to filling a story with a solid background colour shows the long-press trick.

Naming, Ordering and Deleting Highlights

Naming

Short names work best, since only about 15 characters show before Instagram cuts them off. Use one word per highlight: Menu, Reviews, Hours, Shop, FAQ. To rename, open the highlight, tap More › Edit highlight, and change the title.

Ordering

You can't drag highlights into a custom order. Instagram puts the most recently updated highlight first. To move one to the front, add a new story to it, even an older one from your archive. Plan your additions so the highlight you most want people to see is the last one you update.

Deleting

• One story: open the highlight, go to that story, tap More, and choose Remove from highlight. It stays in your archive.
• A whole highlight: press and hold the highlight circle on your profile and tap Delete highlight. The stories inside go back to being archive-only.

Why Highlights Matter for Canadian Creators and Small Businesses

A profile visitor decides in a few seconds whether to follow. Highlights sit right under your bio, so they do the job of a website menu: a café can show its hours and today's specials, a realtor can show listings and testimonials, and a creator can show a portfolio or a "Start here" story. Pair a clear row of highlights with a strong bio, and our bio examples by niche help with that part, and you have a profile that explains itself.

Bilingual tip: if you serve customers in both English and French, as many businesses in Quebec, Ottawa and New Brunswick do, either use names that work in both languages (Menu, FAQ, Photos, Info) or pair English and French highlights, such as "Reviews" and "Avis". Icon-only covers keep the row language-neutral, so the names can do the translating. A bilingual row shows French-speaking visitors you're ready to serve them.

Highlights turn visits into follows, but they can't bring the visits. A larger audience means more people tapping through them. Some new accounts start with a base of Canadian followers for early social proof while they build the organic habits that keep a profile growing.

FAQ: Instagram Highlights