Instagram Highlights Guide — Covers & Ideas

Highlights are the permanent shelves on your profile — the place visitors look first to understand what you are about. A good highlight setup turns a casual profile visit into a follow. Here is how to build highlights that look great and actually get watched.

How to create a highlight

Open your profile and tap the New circle under your bio, or open any story and tap Highlight. Pick the stories you want, name the highlight, and it appears on your profile. You can add or remove stories from a highlight at any time.

Designing covers that match

A cover is the small image shown on the highlight circle. The cleanest profiles use matching covers — simple icons or solid colours with one symbol each. Design them in any free editor at 1080 by 1920 pixels, upload one as a story, then set it as the cover before the story expires.

Adding a highlight without a story

There is no official way to add a highlight without posting a story first, but there is a neat trick: post the story, add it to a highlight immediately, then hide the story from everyone using the Close Friends list with nobody on it. The story still lands in the highlight, but almost nobody sees it live.

Highlight ideas that work

Good highlight topics answer the questions a new visitor has: About, Services, Prices, Reviews, Behind the Scenes, FAQs, and your best work. Keep names short — one or two words — and keep each highlight focused on a single topic so it is easy to browse.

How many highlights should you have?

Four to six highlights is the sweet spot for most profiles. Fewer than that and visitors do not learn much about you; more than eight and the row becomes a wall nobody scrolls through. Each highlight should cover one clear topic, with a short name and a matching cover. If a highlight has not been updated in a year, either refresh it with new stories or remove it. Stale highlights make a profile look abandoned. Review your highlights every few months and prune anything that no longer represents you.