Instagram stories are the best way to share your status socially. However, it’s been widely used since stories only last for 24 hours, making it a perfect option to share your important life updates. It’s great to showcase a few moments of your life with the help of daily status, as they vanish after 24 hours which is ideal for sharing your funny moments every day.
But sometimes, this time limit can also be annoying. Because after 24 hours, the update just vanishes. Thankfully there is a way to view old Instagram stories, which we are going to explain how in this article. But if you want to see other’s old stories, just read below and find out if you can.
How To View Old Instagram Stories
Seeing your old story is very easy. Just follow these steps to do so,
Open the Instagram app and tap on your profile.
Now tap on the three-line (Hamburger menu).
Tap on Archives (It’s the first option.)
Now here you can find all of your stories.
You can delete them, view them or share them with your current status if you want to.
Finding stories
If you have posted a lot of stories, you may find it very hard to find what you were looking for. But thankfully, Instagram has a workaround for this. It automatically categorizes your stories based on date as well as location. If you remember the date you shared to story, then you can simply swipe right to the date picker and pick the date to view stories on that date.
If you remember the location of the story, then you can again swipe right to access the location map and view stories by that location.
Archiving stories
You can only see your old stories only if Story archiving is turned on. Although by default it is turned on. But if you want to check or change the settings,
Open your profile in the Instagram app.
Tap on the hamburger menu and tap on Archives
Tap on the three dots on the right.
Now tap on settings.
Now you can change the settings to save stories to archive from here.
Tip: Keep it on; it just better to have them. Only you can see your archives.
Viewing other’s old stories
Now, if you want to see other’s stories, you simply cannot. Because the Archive of stories, as mentioned above, is only accessible by the owner.
The only way you could see other’s stories if the person has made it as a story highlight. Now story highlights can be seen by other peoples. To do so, simply head over to their profile, you can find their story highlights just below their username details.
Highlighting your old Instagram stories
The only way to let others see your stories for a long time is to make it a story highlight. To do so,
- Open archives, as mentioned in the above steps.
- Now open the story you wish to make it a Highlight.
- Tap on the highlight icon below.
That’s it. Now your story can be viewed by others in the Story highlights section.
Conclusions
So as you can see, seeing your old stories is very easy since Instagram stores old stories as an archive. Although if you want to see other’s old stories, then you’re out of luck since there is no way to do that.
But if you think you want to see someone’s story later again, it’s good to take a screenshot of it. Although just know that Instagram notifies the owner if you take a screenshot of their stories.
