How to delete a photo or entire story from Instagram

Instagram Stories is a convenient way to share about oneself and one’s life to others through photos or short videos, up to 15 seconds long. This time is enough to capture the interest of viewers and attract an audience to one’s profile.

By default, the publication period lasts for 24 hours, but what if the story was unsuccessful, boring, or lost its relevance and needs to be deleted urgently? In this article, we will explain how to delete a story from Instagram and clean up the feed on mobile devices and personal computers.

Deleting Instagram stories via phone

Instagram allows users to communicate with other users and post their photos and videos in the news feed as short stories. According to the established rules, the duration of one post cannot exceed 15 seconds, otherwise it is automatically divided into several equal parts.

After a successful publication, you can edit the post at any time, format it differently, or even delete it from the news feed. It should be remembered that the storage and broadcasting period of Stories on Instagram is only 24 hours, after which it will disappear and move to the archive (if this feature is not disabled). There may be situations when there is no time to wait for a whole day and you need to delete the post immediately.

Let’s look at how to delete unwanted posts on mobile devices with different software – on Android and IOS.

On Android

If you are using a mobile device with Android software, it will be easy for you to delete unnecessary posts on social media. To delete a story, you will need to:

1. Launch the mobile application on your smartphone or tablet.
2. Enter your personal data and log in to your account.
3. In the main menu of the network service, find the section with your published stories.
4. If there are multiple publications, select the one you want to delete.
5. On the bottom panel, click on the button in the form of three dots with the caption “More”.
6. After that, a pop-up window will appear, where you need to click on the publication deletion item.
7. The service will require you to confirm your intentions, give your consent.
8. Done. Now your feed is empty.

After this, visitors to your page will not be able to see the deleted post.

On iOS

The principle of operation of Instagram and deleting stories on Apple devices is similar to the previous instruction. To delete a story on Instagram on an iPhone, you will need to:

1. Launch the utility on the device.
2. Login to your account.
3. On the main page, click on the story you plan to delete.
4. In the lower corner, find the button in the form of three dots and select the option to delete the post.
5. Confirm the action.

How to clear Instagram history via computer

If you use the social network Instagram on your personal computer, you should know about a number of restrictions in the web version of the service. According to the rules, you will not be able to upload and publish a video, photo to the news feed or to stories via PC without using third-party services, additional applications, and extensions.

Despite these restrictions, in the web version, you can view your friends’ and your own stories, as well as delete them if necessary. To do this, follow these instructions:

1. Launch any browser on your personal computer and go to the social network’s website.
2. Log in to your account, enter your login and password.
3. On the main page of the service, on the right, you will see stories published by you or your subscribers.
4. Click on your story.
5. A new window will open, showing the corresponding video or photo. Find the settings button in the lower corner.
6. Select the option to delete the post from public access.
7. Done.

Now no one will be able to view the deleted publication.

Is it possible to delete a story that didn’t load?

Some users face an unpleasant problem when the mobile application simply hangs during the publication of a story. This usually happens due to network connection problems or lack of internet speed. How it manifests:

1. When publishing a video or photo in a story, the loading takes several minutes, hours and does not end.
2. In the main working window on the story addition panel, you will see a red exclamation mark.

If the story is stuck and does not load, you will not be able to change your profile or log out.

To fix the situation, you need to remove the stuck story, but the system will not allow you to do this until you do the following:

1. Turn off data transfer on your mobile device.
2. Go to the phone settings section and open the active applications tab.
3. In the list, find Instagram and clear the cache.
4. Launch the utility without network access.
5. A button in the form of ellipsis appears next to the loading story, click on it and select the delete item.
6. Done.

After that, connect to the internet and use the social network for your pleasure.

Deleting Stories – What You Need to Know

Before deleting a specific post, you should think carefully whether it is worth doing so. Even after turning off a story from the main news feed, it is not completely erased. All stories are automatically saved and transferred to the archive after deletion or the end of the broadcast – 24 hours. Here you can restore a photo or video and repost it to the news feed at any time.

To permanently delete a publication from the archive list, you will need to:

1. Launch the mobile application and log in to your account.
2. To access your personal page, click on the button in the form of a silhouette of a person on the bottom control panel.
3. Open the settings section by clicking on the button in the form of three lines on the right side of the display.
4. In the opened window, select the transition to the archive.
5. Here you will see all your publications that were made earlier, from the moment of your registration in the social network.
6. Select the unnecessary content and click on it.
7. Click on the “More” button and delete the story forever.

Note that you can disable the automatic saving of your stories in the archive. To do this, you need to disable the copy function in the archive settings.

Deleted stories cannot be restored in Instagram if they have been deleted from the archive. Therefore, before starting the procedure, think carefully.

The article discusses ways to delete stories from Instagram on different devices (from a phone and computer) and operating systems. Remember that by default, publications are broadcasted for no more than 24 hours, so they will automatically disappear from the feed without your intervention.