Instagram Drafts: How to Save, Post & Delete Them?
Instagram is an addictive and popular app because of its easy of use. It has plenty of features like editing photos and videos on the phone. This makes Instagram people's favorite way to do editing of photos and videos on their smartphones. Many times it can happen that you have cropped, editing color settings and added filters to your media. But you are not ready to post it immediately. Perhaps you would like to edit it some more later, or you are simply waiting for the right time to post it. This is why there is a feature called Drafts on Instagram. Your edited photos, videos, stories or reels can be Saved as Drafts, so that you can edit them more and post them later. In this article, you will learn how to save, post, and delete drafts on Instagram in this article.
- Q1: How to Save Drafts on Instagram?
- Q2: How to Post Drafts on Instagram?
- Q3: How to Delete Drafts on Instagram?
Q1: How to Save Drafts on Instagram?
You can Save as Draft any photo, video, reel or story on Instagram. Instead of posting a photo immediately, you can edit it, and then save this edited media as a draft. All your drafts are saved in a separate section called Drafts. Thus, you can use Instagram for editing pictures and video clips, and then save them as drafts for later use. Let us see step-by-step how you can Save an image or video as a Draft on Instagram using the Instagram app on Android or iPhone/iPad.
Step by Step Instructions for Saving Drafts on Instagram
1. Open the Instagram app on your phone.
2. Tap on the + icon on the top right for posting something on Instagram.
3. Select on the bottom right whether you want to post a Photo, Video, Reel or Story.
4. Now select a photo/video from your Gallery or any other folder on your phone. Or you can simply use your camera to take a photo or record a video, and use this media.
5. Tap on the Right Arrow on top right, to proceed to edit this selected photo/video.
6. Now feel free to apply some Filter or use the Edit section to change the look of the photo/video. When you are done editing, tap on Right Arrow on top right to proceed to the next step.
7. On this page, you can add description, tags, music and use other options. This is the final page before you post something on Instagram. If you were to tap on the Right Arrow, this edited content would be posted to your profile.
8. But we don't want to post the photo/video immediately and want to save it as draft. As you can see on the screen, there is no "Save as Draft" button on this final screen. (wouldn't it be great if it existed?)
9. In order to save this edited content as a draft, you must tap on the Left Arrow on the top left a couple of times to go on the previous screens.
10. Here you will get the dialogue menu "Save as Draft?". Now simply tap on Save Draft to save this edited content in your Instagram drafts!
Please be careful at this step: if you accidentally tap the "Discard" option instead of "Save Draft", all your edits on the photo/video will be lost.
Why am I not able to get the "Save as draft" option?
In order to save any photo or video as a draft, you need to edit it at least a little. By "Edit", we mean doing anything like applying a Filter, editing color settings, or adding some tags & description to it.
Please note that if you have not even slightly edited the selected photo or video, you will not get the "Save as Draft" option.
Q2: How to Post Drafts on Instagram?
Now you know how to edit and save any photo or video as a draft on Instagram. You can use this feature to make edits to your future planned posts and save them as Drafts for quickly posting them later at the right time. We will show you how you can post your drafts on Instagram app using Android or iPhone/iPad.
Step by Step Instructions for Posting your Drafts on Instagram
1. Open the Instagram app on your phone.
2. Tap on the + icon on the top right for posting something on Instagram.
3. By default, you will see the content in your photo roll or gallery. But there is also a Drafts section next to Gallery (or Photo Roll). Tap on Drafts.
4. In the Drafts section you can see all the posts that you edited earlier and saved as drafts.
5. Select any photo/video that you wish to post now. You can do more edits on it if you wish. Tap on Right Arrow, to move to the final screen.
6. You can add/edit description, tags, music etc. here. Then when you are ready, tap the Check/Tick mark on top right and post this draft as a New Post.
Keep in mind that once you post your drafts, they are no longer stored in your Drafts section. Only the unposted drafts will remain here.
Q3: How to Delete Drafts on Instagram?
Drafts on Instagram is a useful feature to edit and save posts in advance without posting them immediately. You use do edits on your photos and videos whenever you have free time, and save them in the Drafts section. Then later when you want to post this edited content, you can quickly go in your Drafts section and post them quickly.
But sometimes, we want to delete or discard some drafts. Maybe we don't like the edits on them, or feel that we are not going to post this content. Or perhaps you were simply practicing your editing skills, and wish to declutter the Drafts section. In any case, we will show you exactly how to discard or delete your drafts on Instagram app using your Android or iPhone/iPad.
Step by Step Instructions for Discarding/Deleting your Drafts on Instagram
1. Open the Instagram app on your phone.
2. Tap on the + icon on the top right for posting something on Instagram.
3. Go to the Drafts section. You will see a "Manage" option. It also shows the total number of drafts that you have saved. For example, in this screenshot you can see Manage (5). Tap on Manage.
4. Here you will see all your posts saved as drafts. If you wish to discard or delete some drafts, tap on the Pencil icon on the top right.
5. Now you can select the drafts that you want to discard/delete.
6. Tap on the drafts to select them, and they will get a tick mark. Make sure you have selected the correct drafts for discarding.
7. To delete the selected drafts, simply tap on the Checkmark or Tick mark icon on the top right.
8. It will ask you once to confirm if you really want to Discard the selected drafts. You can tap on Discard to go ahead with the deletion, or Cancel if you change your mind.
9. You will see that the selected drafts that you chose to discard have been removed successfully. They are no longer available in your Drafts section.
Please keep in mind, that once you Discard a draft, it is deleted forever. There is no way to recover your edited draft posts once you have discarded them. So be careful to discard drafts only if you are absolutely sure that you will not need them later.
Final Words
In this article, you have learned how to manage Drafts on Instagram. Use the drafts feature to edit and save your posts in advance, so that you can edit them more later or post them quickly at the right time in the future. And if you wish to declutter your Drafts section, you can go to the Manage option, select the drafts you wish to delete, and discard them.
Keep in mind the following things when working with Instagram Drafts:
- If you have made no edits to a post, there is no way to Save it as a Draft. The drafts feature is only available once you add some description, filter or make any kind of edits to the photos/videos.
- Once you post a saved draft to your profile or Story to your profile, it will no longer remain in the Drafts section. Sometimes we can get confused about why we can no longer find an old draft even if we didn't delete it? So make sure to remember that it could be most likely because we have already posted it as a Photo, Story or Reel!
- You can declutter your Drafts section by deleting some drafts that you no longer need. But remember that there is no way to recover a draft after you have deleted/discarded it. So use the Discard option only when you are totally sure that you don't need the edited draft post any more.
Let us know in the comments section if you find the Drafts feature useful? How many posts do you have in your Instagram Drafts section? Do you create drafts on Instagram in order to practicing your editing skill, or for keeping your future posts ready in advance?
