Finding Your Archived Instagram Posts Is Easy & It'll Make You So Nostalgic

Curating the perfect Instagram grid isn’t a simple process. Sometimes, you need to get rid of old posts to achieve the look you’re going for, but you don’t have to delete your outdated photos into oblivion to get there. You can actually remove posts from your personal feed by saving them in an archive on Instagram. That way, you don’t have to delete posts that you might want to resurrect later. To keep a handle on your pics of Instagram past, you’ll need to know how to view your archived Instagram posts. Thankfully, it’s super simple to check out your throwbacks, and it may inspire you to fully change up your IG ~aesthetic~.

Instagram launched the Post Archive in July 2017, but if you have yet to use it, you won’t have any pictures in your personal Post Archive. (If you share Stories on Instagram, though, they’ll always show up in your archive under Stories Archive.) To archive posts from your Instagram grid, go to your Instagram feed and find a photo you’d rather not have on your grid anymore. After you select the post, tap the three dots in the upper right corner of the post and choose Archive. That will remove it from your grid and add it to your Instagram archive without deleting it entirely. This is where the ability to access your archived Instagram posts comes in.

The process to access those Instagram posts once you’ve archived them is fairly simple. First, go to your Instagram profile. Once you're there, tap the three horizontal lines in the upper right corner of your screen, which will produce a drop-down menu. Select “Archive,” which is the second option in the menu and has a picture of a reverse-arrow clock.

Once you’re in your archive, you may only see your Stories at first and not your archived posts. In order to toggle to the Posts Archive, tap “Stories Archive” at the top of the screen. You’ll see another drop-down menu with three options: “Stories Archive,” “Posts Archive,” and “Live Archive.” You’ll want to choose “Posts Archive.” (The Live Archive is where you’ll be able to find any previous Instagram live streams you’ve done.)

Once you do that, all of the posts you've archived on Instagram will appear on the screen. The coolest part about the feature is each image is still fully edited as it was when you first posted it, and will have all of the likes and comments from when you initially posted it. In other words, nothing about the post has changed aside from the fact it's now private and won’t show up on your feed.

If you're scrolling through your archived content and see a picture you really like, you can always re-post it onto your Instagram grid. To do so, tap the picture in your archive and tap the three dots in the upper right corner. When you do that, two options will appear: “Delete” or “Show on Profile.” Choose the latter to have your post automatically posted back to your grid and removed from your archive. When you post it back to your profile, the un-archived photo won’t show up at the top of your grid. Instead, it'll be posted chronologically according to the original date you posted it.

If you’re in search of old Stories, you can find them in the same place as archived posts. All you need to do is choose "Stories Archive" from the archive menu, and your old pics and vids will be there. When you click into an old Story, you can tap the three dots at the bottom right corner to find the options to delete it, save it, or share it as a post on your grid. You can also re-share it to your Story or save it as a highlight by tapping the respective icons at the bottom of your photo or video.

So the next time you want to freshen up your personal feed, archive away. No need to stress over whether you need to delete a pic for good.