How to make instagram story highlights without posting

How to make instagram story highlights without posting

Instagram allows you to add a Highlight on your profile which is a collection of the stories you’ve uploaded in the past. This feature allows your profile to look more interesting because it gives people another insight into what you get up to.

If you want to add a story from your camera roll straight to your Highlights, this wouldn’t be possible because Instagram only lets you post a story based on what you’ve uploaded to your story and left for a full 24 hours.

If you didn’t leave the story for 24 hours, you wouldn’t be able to add it to a Highlight.

Can You Add to Highlights Without Posting to Story?

  • Can You Add to Highlights Without Posting to Story?
  • How To Add Highlights on Instagram Without Posting to Story
    • Step 1: Put Your Account on Private
    • Step 2: Block Everyone from Seeing your Story
    • Step 3: Upload the Story
    • Step 4: Add Story to Highlights
    • Step 5: Unblock People from Story
  • Other Ways to Add Instagram Highlights Without Posting to Story
    • 1. Post the Story, Archive it, A Minute Before 24 Hours is Over, Unarchive It then add It to Highlights
    • 2. Add It to Close Friends Story Then Upload It to Highlights After

Unless you have posted a story before, there is no way you can add a story to your Highlights without it ever being posted before. Instagram doesn’t allow you to a video or photo from your camera roll straight to your highlights, you have to post it on your story before you can add it to your highlights.

If you’ve posted the story before, then you can add it to your Highlights without adding it to your story again.

How To Add Highlights on Instagram Without Posting to Story

You need to block everyone from seeing your story, upload the story that you want to add to your Highlights. After 24 hours, you can add the story to your Highlights and unblock everyone from seeing your story.

This will seem like you didn’t add the highlight to your story because no one could see it. The following methods show you how to do this in more detail.

Step 1: Put Your Account on Private

How to make instagram story highlights without posting

The first thing you need to do is to make your account private – doing this will stop people from seeing your story if they don’t already follow you.

If your account isn’t on private before you upload from your camera roll to your story, people who don’t follow you will able to see your story that you blocked your followers from seeing. This will keep the story viewers to only your followers meaning that outsiders won’t be able to view your story.

Step 2: Block Everyone from Seeing your Story

How to make instagram story highlights without posting

Since there’s no way to add stories to your Highlights without posting them on your story, you need to make sure that you block everyone from seeing your story. If you’ve blocked all of your followers from watching your story, then they wouldn’t be able to see that you’ve posted before you added the story to your highlight.

Go to Settings > click on Story Control > click on 0 people.

From here, you’ll need to select all of your followers to block them from seeing your story. This is going to take a long time depending on how many followers you have. If you choose not to block everyone from your story, then people will be able to see that you’ve posted a story.

Step 3: Upload the Story

After you’ve made your account private and you’ve blocked everyone from seeing your story, you’ll need to upload a video/picture from your camera roll, post it to your story, and leave it here for 24 hours. Once you’ve done this, it’ll automatically go to your archive where every story you’ve ever had up will be stored.

Step 4: Add Story to Highlights

How to make instagram story highlights without posting

Once the story is live, you’ll need to click the Highlight button at the bottom > choose the Highlight you want it in.

You need to make sure that the story is up for 24 hours unless when it’s uploaded to your Highlights, Instagram will delete it from your Highlights as well as your story.

If the story is gone and you later want to add it to your highlights, you need to go to your profile and select the add button. From here, you’ll be shown an archive of all of the stories you’ve posted in the past, from here, you can add it to your highlights.

Step 5: Unblock People from Story

After the story has been added to your highlights, you can start to unblock people from seeing your story. You can do this while your story is live, and they still wouldn’t be able to see it.

If you check the views on your story, you should be able to see that no one has viewed it because they were blocked from seeing your story. You can leave them blocked and post all of the photos and videos that you want to post to your highlights without anyone knowing that you posted on your story.

Other Ways to Add Instagram Highlights Without Posting to Story

1. Post the Story, Archive it, A Minute Before 24 Hours is Over, Unarchive It then add It to Highlights

Remember that there is a difference between Instagram stories and highlights and this is what will enable you to understand this process effectively. For Instagram stories, they are available for your followers to view and after 24 hours, they will expire.

However, for highlights, they act as archived stories that you have posted in the past and can be categorized to appear on your profile for a long time other than just 24 hours. They act as introductions to what your profile is all about.

Here are the steps to follow.

1. Tap the plus button on top of your Instagram profile then “story” to add a story.

2. You can either take a photo, record a video or even upload content from your device.

3. Go ahead and add a text, sticker, or even draw on the video or photo.

4. The next part is to tap on “Your Story” and you can share or skip that step. Then tap “Done” to finish the process.

5. Go back to your profile and tap the three lines on the top.

6. You will get a menu pop-up. Tap on the “Settings”.

7. Now tap the “Privacy” option.

8. On the Privacy option, look for “Story” and tap on it.

9. Scroll down and look for the option “Save Story to Archive”. Tap the button next to it to turn on the archive option.

10. Now, wait for 1min to 24 hours. By archiving the story, no one will be able to see it for that period of time.

11. Just 1min before 24hours are over, go back to the archive option, and tap the turn off button.

12. Go back to your profile page.

13. Tap on your profile picture at the top.

14. You will get your story displayed. At the bottom of the page, tap on “Highlight” to add the story to your highlights.

2. Add It to Close Friends Story Then Upload It to Highlights After

When you want to create highlights, the goal is to make something that will stand as a representation of your brand or what your profile is all about.

As a result, you may not want to share that with everyone. Sharing your story with your close friends will prevent other people from seeing it and you can add it to highlights later.

1. Go to your profile page.

2. Tap on the three lines on top of the page.

3. Then tap on the “Close Friends” options.

4. You will get a list of friends. Make the friends you want by tapping on the right.

5. Once finished tap “Get Started or Done”.

6. Add the story by tapping on the plus icon on your profile page.

7. Tap the “Story” option and select a photo or video from your device or you can take or record it directly.

8. At the bottom of the screen, tap on “Close Friends”.

9. The story will be uploaded. Now, tap on your profile picture.

10. On the story, tap the “Highlight” option at the bottom. Provide details and add

Can you add to Instagram highlights without adding to story?

Underneath your bio, you should see a 'plus' sign in a circle, under 'Story Highlights'. Select the plus sign and you will be able to create a new Highlight!

How do you highlight on Instagram without posting it?

Create Highlight from the archived stories.
Go to your Instagram profile and tap Story Highlights below bio..
Tap the plus icon..
In the new window, tap and select the stories you want to appear in the Highlight and tap Next..
Tap 'Edit Cover' to choose which story will appear as a Highlight icon or just upload an icon..