Instagram highlights keep your stories visible on your profile long after they disappear from the story feed. If you’re wondering, “Can you hide a highlight on Instagram?” the short answer is yes — but with a few caveats and workarounds.
In this article you will learn how highlights work, what hiding options Instagram offers, step-by-step methods to hide or limit visibility, and smart tips to control your content and audience the way you want it.
What Instagram Highlights Are and Why They Matter
Highlights act as permanent galleries of your story content. Instead of vanishing after 24 hours like regular stories, they sit just below your bio and stay visible to anyone who can access your profile. With over 500 million users viewing Instagram stories daily, highlights have become a key tool to showcase important moments or brand content. Using them wisely helps you shape how visitors perceive your profile and manage ongoing content.
Because they’re front and center, you might not always want everything to remain visible. You might want to hide a highlight for privacy, because it no longer represents your brand or simply to declutter your profile. Instagram doesn’t offer a dedicated “hide highlight” toggle for every scenario, but it does provide two primary methods to manage who sees your highlights.
Method 1: Hide Highlights by Restricting Story Visibility
Instagram links story visibility with highlight visibility. If you prevent a user from seeing your story, any highlight created from that story also becomes invisible to them. To apply this:
- Open Instagram and go to your profile.
- Tap the three horizontal lines → Settings → Privacy → Story.
- Under “Hide story from”, select the people you want to exclude.
Once this list is set, anyone on it cannot view your stories or highlights made from those stories.
Method 2: Use the Close Friends List for Highlights
If you want to show a highlight only to a small audience, use Instagram’s Close Friends feature:
- Go to profile → three lines → Settings → Privacy → Story.
- Tap “Close Friends” and add people you trust.
- When uploading your story or adding to a highlight, choose “Close Friends”.
Only people on that list will be able to view the story and highlight. Others won’t even see the highlight icon for that content.
Can You Hide a Highlight Entirely from Your Profile?
Instagram does not provide a built-in toggle to hide a highlight from all viewers while still keeping it saved and visible only to you. That means the highlight icon remains on your profile unless you remove it or use the methods above to limit visibility. Your best options are:
- Delete the highlight — tap and hold the highlight and select “Delete”.
• Remove individual slides within the highlight — Edit → uncheck unwanted slides and save.
• Use the “Hide story from” approach to keep it visible to some but hidden from others.
• If you want to remove it from view temporarily, remove the highlight and re-add it later when ready.
Step-by-Step: Hide a Highlight from Specific People
- Open Instagram and navigate to your profile.
- Tap the three lines at top right → Settings → Privacy → Story.
- Under “Hide story from”, search and select the users you want to exclude.
- Tap Done/Save.
- If you already have a highlight you want hidden, any story inside that highlight will now be invisible to those users.
- To reverse, go back and uncheck those users from the list.
Step-by-Step: Make a Highlight Visible Only to Close Friends
- Go to profile → Settings → Privacy → Story → Close Friends.
- Add only the people you want to see selected content.
- Create a story or select from archive the story to add to highlights.
- Choose “Close Friends” when sharing.
- Then add to a highlight—only your Close Friends list will see it.
- Change the list anytime to shift who can access those highlights.
Common Questions & Important Considerations
- Will hiding a story also hide existing highlights? Yes — once you hide someone from your story, any highlight built from that story becomes invisible to them too.
- Can you hide a highlight only from some people? Yes, via the “Hide story from” list — but you cannot hide a highlight entirely while keeping it on your profile for all others without deletion.
- Does hiding a highlight notify users? No. Instagram does not notify people when you adjust story/highlight visibility settings.
- Does archiving a highlight hide it? Archiving stories hides them from the public Story feed, but highlights remain separate and visible until you delete or restrict them with stories.
- If you later un-hide someone from stories, will they see past highlights? Yes. Once they’re removed from the hide list, any highlights they missed become visible unless you’ve separately deleted or removed the slides.
- Does this work for business accounts and creators? Yes — the same privacy settings apply whether you have a personal, creator or business account.
Why You Might Want to Hide a Highlight
- Privacy issues: Perhaps you posted a story about a personal event you no longer want public.
• Brand alignment: Old highlights may not match your current theme or aesthetic.
• Audience segmentation: You may want some content only for Close Friends or internal teams.
• Profile refresh: Hiding or deleting outdated highlights keeps your profile clean for new followers.
Smart Tips for Highlight Management
- Review your highlights every 2-3 months and remove what no longer reflects your current content strategy.
• Use custom covers and descriptive titles that match your brand and help users understand what’s inside.
• If you’re using Close Friends or hide lists, update them periodically to reflect changing relationships.
• Make your account private if you want total control over who sees anything on your profile.
• Remember: hiding highlights reduces visibility and reach. If you’re a business or influencer, consider whether limiting access is worth the trade-off.
Wrapping Up
Yes, you can hide a highlight on Instagram — but you’ll rely on either controlling story visibility (so that highlights derived from those stories are hidden) or using Close Friends to share with a select few. Instagram doesn’t allow true “highlight only for me” visibility without deletion, so if you need total privacy, deleting the highlight remains your simplest option.
By regularly reviewing who sees your content, using the built-in privacy features, and maintaining your highlight collection, you can keep your profile polished, relevant, and aligned with your current style or brand.