Introducing ‘Recently Deleted’

February 3, 2021

Today, we’re rolling out Recently Deleted, a feature to help you manage your content. We know this is something people have been asking for and now, for the first time, you can review and restore deleted content in the Instagram app. We also added protections to help prevent hackers from compromising your account and deleting posts you’ve shared.

We know hackers sometimes delete content when they gain access to an account, and until now people had no way of easily getting their photos and videos back. Starting today, we will ask people to first verify that they are the rightful account holders when permanently deleting or restoring content from Recently Deleted.

Screenshots of Instagram's recently deleted folder.

How it works

Photos, videos, reels, IGTV videos and stories you choose to delete are removed from your account immediately and moved to the Recently Deleted folder.

Deleted stories that are not in your archive will stay in the folder for up to 24 hours. Everything else will be automatically deleted 30 days later.

During those 30 days, you can access your deleted content by going to Settings > Account > Recently Deleted on the latest version of the Instagram app. From there you can either restore or permanently delete it.

More information on how to delete and restore content in the folder can be found in our Help Center.