When we use Instagram, we move through hundreds of profiles and stories. We are clicking from one point to another and sometimes, it is possible that we let's leave something by the wayside. That user who uploaded a reel, you left a comment but you forgot to follow. That story that you published a few days ago and that you want to recover. Or that crush that you stalked for a while and then you forgot the name. Whatever your problem, here are the steps you must follow to see all your history of Instagram.
Instagram has several histories and you can check them
Social networks like Instagram are designed to be used from their native app. And, unlike what would happen in a browser, native apps do not keep a step-by-step history of our activity. Therefore, consulting what we did a few days ago on Instagram will not be as easy as consulting it in the event that we used Google Chrome. Luckily, Instagram has some tools so you can check your activity. The system is not perfect, but it allows you to retrace your steps to rediscover all that you left behind on the way.
What can we get to consult? Mainly, you will be able to see the stories and posts that you have archived. But not only that. Instagram also offers you the possibility of recovering the searches you have done on the social network, as well as quickly locating the comments you have made and the responses from the Stories. At the end of the post we will also leave you with a couple of very useful hidden gems that even allow you to locate the ads that you have seen and have been interested in on this social network.
History of Stories, Publications and Direct
Your Stories They can be viewed for 24 hours after publication. After that time, your followers won't be able to see those posts again, but that doesn't mean they'll disappear. The same goes for archived posts and live videos. To see past posts, you can go to the Instagram Archive. It is done like this:
- Open your Instagram app and tap on your avatar in the lower right corner of the screen.
- Now, click on the top right, on the icon of the three horizontal bars.
- We came in Archive.
- There we will have a history with all the Stories, Direct and publications. They are the following that we are going to see below:
Stories Archive
In this block, all the Stories that we have not set so far will appear. If you have few, you can see them at a glance, but if you have many, you can tap on the central tab, which separates the Stories by date. Finally, if you prefer to search for the stories by the location in which they were made, the last tab allows you to see a map with those locations. Once the Stories are located, you can mark them to keep them fixed on your profile or add them to a group.
Publications Archive
Here will appear the publications that you had in your feed and that you have ever archived. You can recover or consult these photos and videos from this section. This file does not have any type of time limitation. It simply works as a history of images that have ever been part of your profile.
The post archive is especially interesting if at some point you had to change the theme of your account, or if you went from having a personal profile to a professional one. You must be somewhat careful with him, as we will see in the epigraph at the end. Sometimes this file contains sensitive or private information that we do not want some third parties to discover.
Direct History
If you usually do direct on Instagram, you can see them here to rescue them if necessary. Of course, they will be completely deleted from your account if you do not save them during the first 30 days.
search history
Everything you search for from the Instagram magnifying glass is recorded so that you can consult it later. It can be of great help if you usually visit the same profiles every day or if you found a user, but you didn't have the desire to follow them. In any case, if you find someone within Instagram through searches, but you no longer remember the name of the account, you can recover it quickly and comfortably.
To watch the search history, go to the magnifying glass and tap on the 'Search' dialog. Before entering text, a list will be displayed with the recent users and hashtags that you have consulted. You can see the complete list if you touch on 'View all'.
As you may be imagining, this is a double edged sword. What would your partner think if he saw the list of profiles you usually consult out of the corner of his eye? Well, to delete this history, you can tap on 'Erase everything' within the 'View All' menu. You can also delete each individual search by tapping on the X next to each profile. In this way, you can delete some searches and the list has not disappeared by surprise.
comment history
The search history is quite well known, as we see it every time we search for something. And the file is somewhat hidden, but it is not difficult that we have ever reached it. But the comment history is not a feature that every user knows about, and it can save you a lot of time.
Suppose you write a comment on a profile, but you don't like or follow the user, either because you don't want to, or because you forget. How can you see that comment again? Imagine that you have forgotten the username. Or, let's put a worse case. Imagine that you leave a comment, and after a while you find out that you have screwed up. How can you delete your comment as quickly as possible? well the comment history it is your salvation. You can check it in the following way:
- click on your profile in the lower right corner of the app.
- Tap in the top right corner, on the 'burger menu'.
- Let's go to the sectionYour Activity'.
- We go inside'Interactions'.
Within this section we will be able consult comments, likes and responses to stories. Clicking on a comment will teleport you directly to that post, and yours will be highlighted. You won't have to browse the list or anything like that to find it. Once located, you can see what you wrote or delete it, if that is what you want.
Also within this you can see all the likes you have given to the posts of others. The list is surely endless, but it will allow you to locate that photo or video that you were looking for and that you cannot find through the magnifying glass.
And finally, we also have the story response history. Here not only the text and the 'little fires' are recorded, but also what you responded to surveys, votes and others will appear. Yes, the list does not allow to delete anything. We can just sort and filter to see what we did. We will not be able to see the stories either, since naturally, they will have already expired.
What else is recorded in 'Your activity'?
The 'Your Activity' panel holds a few more secrets. They are the following:
Links
You see an ad, you like it, you open it, but then you don't open the link in the browser, and you were interested in what appeared in that link. Have I lost him forever? Well no. It is inside Your Activity > Links you have visited.
Instagram advertising is usually pretty spot on, so on more than one occasion, you will have seen an ad that really interests you. If at the time you did not save the publication to view it later calmly, this section makes it easy for you, because you will be able to see the link of an ad without having to wait for it to appear again in your timeline. It is seen that those of Zuckerberg think of everything. Hence, there are so many advertisers willing to invest in the platform.
Recently removed
Works like paper bin, and all the posts that you have recently deleted, whether they are photos, videos or direct, are stored here. From there you can restore the publication in case you are interested.
Beware of privacy
Have access to all of these histories it's great. Being able to locate an archived photo or a comment that you made a long time ago can be extremely useful in order to locate a date, remember an important event or even remove some data from our profile without losing it. Anything negative that we should highlight? Well yes.
Like any social network, Instagram is designed so that only we have access to our profile. As long as we are the only ones with access to the account, we shouldn't have any problems.
However, you should be careful with your history if you live surrounded by people who you think may spy on your mobile. All these histories will be at the fingertips of anyone who has your access, either through your smartphone or because others know your password.
This is one more reason not to give our Instagram password to anyone. In addition, it is also recommended enable two-step authentication. In this way, if someone discovers your password, there will be a second barrier that will prevent them from accessing both your account and all these valuable records.
It is also not bad that you take a look at the different histories from time to time and eliminate the information that you think can get you into trouble —or that which is not a big deal, but that justifying it to a third person can be a real headache —. They say that curiosity killed the cat. Remember that curiosity is registered in the Instagram search history, so go through that history with some regularity so that nobody discovers the stalker what you have inside