How to Create a Highlight on Instagram: A Complete Guide

Instagram Highlights let you pin your best Stories permanently to your profile — long after the original 24-hour window has closed. If you've never set one up, or you're trying to get more out of the feature, here's exactly how it works and what shapes the experience for different users.

What Is an Instagram Highlight?

A Highlight is a curated collection of Stories that lives on your profile page, just below your bio. Unlike regular Stories that disappear after 24 hours, Highlights stay visible indefinitely until you delete them. Each Highlight appears as a circular thumbnail with a custom cover image and a title you choose.

You can have multiple Highlights — each functioning like a mini-album organized around a theme, topic, or content type.

How to Create a Highlight on Instagram (Step-by-Step)

Method 1: Create a Highlight Directly from Your Profile

1. Open the Instagram app and go to your profile page
2. Tap the "+" circle labeled New that appears in the Highlights row below your bio
3. Your Story archive will appear — select one or more Stories you want to include
4. Tap Next
5. Give your Highlight a title (up to 15 characters)
6. Optionally, tap Edit Cover to choose a custom image
7. Tap Add to publish it to your profile

Method 2: Add a Story to a Highlight While It's Live

1. Open an active Story (one currently visible to followers)
2. Tap the Highlight button at the bottom of the screen (the heart-shaped icon with a "+" symbol)
3. Choose an existing Highlight to add it to, or tap New to create a fresh one
4. Name the Highlight and tap Add

Method 3: Add an Archived Story to an Existing Highlight

1. Go to your profile and tap on an existing Highlight
2. Tap the three-dot menu (⋯) in the bottom right
3. Select Edit Highlight
4. Browse your archive and select additional Stories to include
5. Tap Done

Key Settings and Options Worth Knowing

The Archive Question: Why Some Stories Don't Appear

A common point of confusion is not being able to find older Stories when building a Highlight. This happens because Story archiving must be turned on to save Stories after they expire.

To check or enable this:

• Go to Settings → Privacy → Story
• Toggle on Save to Archive

If archiving wasn't enabled when a Story was posted, that Story is gone and can't be added to a Highlight unless you saved it locally to your camera roll first. In that case, you'd need to repost it as a new Story and then add it.

Customizing Your Highlight Cover 🎨

The default cover pulls from one of the Stories inside the Highlight, which is often a random frame. Most users — especially brands or creators with a consistent visual style — prefer a custom cover image.

To set a custom cover:

• During setup or when editing, tap Edit Cover
• You can select any frame from within the Highlight's Stories, or upload an image directly from your camera roll
• Covers display in a circular crop, so centering your design matters

Many creators design Highlight covers in apps like Canva or Adobe Express ahead of time, using consistent colors or icons to create a polished, cohesive profile aesthetic.

Variables That Affect How Highlights Work for You

Not everyone's Highlight experience looks exactly the same. Several factors shape what's possible:

Account type — Business and Creator accounts have access to additional analytics for Stories, which can inform which content is worth pinning as a Highlight. Personal accounts don't have this data layer.

Story archive history — If you've been using Instagram for years with archiving enabled, you'll have a rich library to pull from. New accounts or those that disabled archiving have limited source material.

Profile visibility — On private accounts, only approved followers can view Highlights. On public accounts, anyone can see them, which changes how you might curate content.

App version and OS — The exact placement of buttons and menu labels can shift slightly between iOS and Android, and Instagram updates its UI frequently. If a button looks different than described, check for a pending app update first.

Content strategy — A business using Highlights to organize FAQs, products, or testimonials will approach setup differently than someone using them as a personal photo diary or event archive.

How Many Highlights Can You Have?

Instagram doesn't publish a hard cap on the number of Highlights allowed per account, but there's a practical limit: only the first few Highlights are immediately visible on a profile without scrolling sideways. Most viewers won't swipe far, so the ordering and number of Highlights you create affects what actually gets seen.

Highlights are displayed in the order they were created or most recently updated — not alphabetically or by engagement. 📌

Editing and Deleting Highlights

To remove a Story from a Highlight without deleting the whole Highlight:

• Long-press the Highlight on your profile
• Select Edit Highlight
• Tap the Stories you want to remove (they'll uncheck)
• Tap Done

To delete an entire Highlight:

• Long-press the Highlight
• Select Delete Highlight
• Confirm — this removes it from your profile but doesn't delete the original Stories from your archive

Whether you're organizing a business profile, building a personal brand, or just saving content you're proud of, how you structure and prioritize Highlights depends heavily on what your profile is actually for — and who's meant to be looking at it.