How to Use the Archive and Highlight Features in Instagram Stories
And what does this mean for Instagram's future?
Instagram Stories just added “Highlight” and “Archive” features to give users even more ability to preserve those impeccably curated moments forever. Just weeks after allowing users to upload older images to their Stories and showing previews of them, Instagram has begun expanding the feature with even more flexibility.
“Now you can more fully express your identity by grouping stories you’ve shared into highlights and featuring them on your profile,” the photo-sharing platform announced.
Instagram is using a slow rollout for the launch, so not everyone will have the new features right away.
Instagram Archive will allow your stories to automatically be saved after they expire. “This makes it easy for you to revisit your favorite moments later on or bring them back to life in a highlight,” Instagram’s blog explains.
Instagram 's Stories Archive will look like this.
Once you have the feature, you can access the Archive through its designated button on your Instagram profile. In your Stories Archive, all of your stories will appear similar to a camera roll’s grid.
What Stories Highlights looks like.
And now “Stories Highlights” appear beneath your Instagram bio. You can create a highlight by tapping the “New” circle at the far left. You can then choose any of the stories you’ve uploaded from your archive and curate its look, where you can even give it a “name.” Highlights stay on your profile until you remove them yourself, the company says.
Instagram’s gradual move toward a more varied use of Stories has been apparent recently. While the feature launched as a Snapchat clone — even the name Stories is a copy — the platform seems to be putting its own spin on them. It’s become less ephemeral and a more integral part of both brands and personal accounts’ Instagram use.
With Instagram Stories becoming wildly successful over the past year, it’s no surprise the platform is attempting to find new ways to encourage users to take up Stories.
“Over the past year, Instagram Stories has become a key part of how you express yourself — but there hasn’t been an easy way to keep your stories around for more than 24 hours,” the company says.
At this rate, it looks like Instagram’s focus to change this will continue.
