If you’re familiar with Instagram, you might know that once you add a photo to a story on Instagram, there’s no way to edit it anymore. You can’t change colors, add filters, add stickers, change geolocation data, or anything else along those lines.
Instagram stories are different from regular posts. This feature lets you create and share a slideshow that appears at the top of your friends’ Instagram feed. Because they’re unique, stories can be edited even after they’ve been posted, but in true Instagram post-editing fashion, there’s only so much you can change.
Posting a Story
To post a story on Instagram, follow these steps:
- On the app’s home page, find ‘Your Story’ in the upper left corner
- Tap the ‘Gallery’ icon at the bottom left of the screen
- Faucet Multi Select If you want to make more than one selection, in the upper right corner
- Browse through your albums and select the photos/videos you want to add – You can switch between your phone’s camera roll and other albums from the top right corner.
- Add stickers, text or doodles using the options in the top right corner
- Swipe right to change filters – You have to do this for each photo by tapping the photos in the lower left corner.
- Faucet Sent next and Your story or choose a specific friend to send
You have many editing and personalization options with the Instagram stories feature. Creating fun and engaging content with the right filters, text, and content is sure to get you some followers.
Story Settings
Revisit your story by tapping your profile icon in the top left corner.
The first thing you can do after posting a story on Instagram is to access the settings menu and play around with the options available there.
Most of these options refer to their level of access to certain actions that you or others can take with your story. For example, you can choose to hide your story from your followers or certain friends after you publish it.
You can also change whether your story is still shareable. Another thing you can do is to disable the reply function even if you have uploaded a story to Instagram.
To access the story settings menu, simply follow the steps below:
- Go to your profile page
- Tap the story icon
- Tap on Story Settings
From there, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page to find all the available options.
The first part of the menu lets you choose who can reply to and view your story. The second part of the menu offers saving options and sharing options.
If you’re hoping to get the attention of as many people as possible (followers, friends, friends of friends, etc.), you may want to allow message replies to everyone. Also, consider saving your story to archive so you don’t lose any photos or videos.
It’s also best to allow sharing. When sharing is enabled, followers and friends will be able to share images, videos and gifs or mini-videos with others in the form of messages.
If you allow reposting, others can share your entire story on their stories. Don’t worry, no one will take credits but you, as your username has to be on their post.
You can delete photos from your story, but not add new ones. Unlike regular Instagram posts where you can’t delete a single photo or video, stories give you a little more flexibility.
You can tap ‘More’ as you did before and tap ‘Delete’ on the photo or video you want to get rid of.
To delete the entire story, swipe up from the bottom and tap the trash icon. Tap ‘Delete’ on the popup and you can repost the content to make any changes you want.
Editing Highlights
While you can’t make any changes to videos or photos after they’ve been posted, you can play around with highlights of your story. Once you’ve created a perfect Instagram story, adding highlights means it will become a permanent part of your Instagram account (unless you delete it, of course) instead of disappearing after 24 hours.
For example, you can add a new highlight at any time.
- Tap the Highlights icon
- Write a title or description for your new highlight
- Tap Add
Once your new highlight appears on your profile page, you can tap and edit the highlight. The only thing you can change will be the title and cover photo. Just like with stories, everything else is disabled for previously published highlights.
Quick Note on Subtitles
You may have noticed that you can edit captions for your existing posts. While this is true, it is not possible to edit captions on photos and videos you add to your story.
There is no edit button or edit option in the menu when you select an image or video from a story. You can change the privacy settings or choose to delete individual photos and videos from the story.
Other changes must be made prior to publication. Of course, you can choose to delete a photo, edit it, apply filters, add captions, and then upload it back to your story. However, it will be listed as the most recently added element of your story, so you can’t go unnoticed. This option is useless if the order of your photos is important.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I edit the privacy settings on my Instagram story?
Yeah. Let’s say you only shared your Story with your close friends. If you want to go back and share this with everyone, there are several ways, and they can all be accessed by tapping the three vertical dots in the lower left corner of your Story.
First, you can save the Story and reload it like a regular video. Second, if you want a specific person to see it, you can select ‘Share’ and share it on Instagram Direct. You can also add it to your ‘Close Friends’ list if someone hasn’t seen it.
Unfortunately Instagram doesn’t make it easy to change privacy in a Story post production, but you’re completely out of luck.
What can I do if I want to edit more?
If you want to make more edits than Instagram allows, you’ll need to save and reload your Story. Open the current Story and tap the three vertical dots in the lower left corner. Next, tap on the option to save the Story to your Gallery (or camera roll depending on your operating system).
Then tap on the Story icon again and load as you normally would. Make all the edits you want, perfect your Story and publish it.
How Often Do You Add to Your Story?
Editing stories after sharing them on Instagram can be annoying and even embarrassing. That’s why it’s important not to rush anything and take your time before posting.
Choosing the right filters and captions will make your stories more interesting and engaging. Always look at your photos (including those in the background) before posting, this will save you a headache and possibly some embarrassment. Take an extra minute to check how you want everything to show so you don’t have to delete and repost your Instagram story.