Delete Archived Stories on Instagram

The overall implementation with Instagram Stories is spot on. By default, Instagram keeps your story visible for 24 hours. You can also save the story on the phone storage to share on other social media networks.  If you forget to save the story within 24 hours, the social network keeps it stored on your account. Some users might find the default settings troubling. They may not want Instagram to store some stories in the account or may want to delete specific stories.  Here’s how you can delete archived or expired stories on Instagram. 

Use Instagram Mobile Apps

Instagram allows you to delete archived stories using mobile apps. Since both the iPhone and Android Instagram apps use the same UI/UX, you can follow the steps on both platforms and delete archived stories on Instagram.  In this post, we will use the Instagram iOS app for references. 

  1. Open Instagram on iPhone or Android. 
  2. Tap on the account menu at the bottom right corner. 
  3. Tap on the hamburger menu at the top.
  4. Go to the Archive menu. 
  5. You will see all your past and current stories in the Stories archive menu. 
  6. Tap on a story that you want to delete. It will open the story on full screen. 
  7. Tap on the More menu at the bottom.  Select Delete from the pop-up menu and confirm your decision.  If you are a power user, your Stories archive menu will be filled with hundreds of stories to delete. If you want to pick some specifics from the list, Instagram’s calendar and location tool can be useful.  From the Archive menu, move to the Calendar menu to see all your uploaded stories by month. You can easily go back to an Instagram story that you uploaded a few months ago.  Location tools can also be useful. If you want to delete uploaded stories from a specific location, you can move to the Location tab and view all the stories by location. Delete them from you are good to go. 

Explore Recently Deleted Menu 

Instagram has made it frustratingly difficult to completely delete archived stories from the app. Your work isn’t done here.  The app will still save these stories in the app. The social network keeps the deleted stories for 30 days. If you change your mind, you can restore them from the Settings menu.  To be on the safer side, you would want to delete them from the Settings menu as well. Here’s what you need to do. 

  1. Open Instagram on your iPhone or Android and go to your account. 
  2. Tap on the hamburger menu and go to Settings. 
  3. Navigate to Account > Recently deleted menu. 
  4. Tap on the story that you permanently deleted. 
  5. Select More and delete it completely from the Instagram account.  Unfortunately, you don’t have the same calendar and maps integration in the Recently deleted menu. 

Can I Delete Achieved Stories From Instagram Web

Unfortunately, no. While Instagram has done a splendid job of bringing major features from the mobile to the web, you can’t delete archived stories using the desktop version.  In fact, there isn’t an Archive menu on the web.  To be on the safer side, you can always delete stories before it expires. That way, it won’t land in the archive stories menu. 

Wrapping Up: Delete Archived Stories from Instagram

There can be many reasons to delete archived stories from Instagram. Maybe you want to remove a painful memory or want to keep your stories menu clean from the Archive menu. We hope Instagram offers the same flexibility from the web as well. If you don’t like Instagram’s current tactics or want to take a break from social media, you can take a small break by deactivating the account.