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How to change instagram story highlight cover


How to Create Beautiful Instagram Highlight Covers (40 Free Icons)

Instagram Highlight covers make a great first impression.

Located right below the bio section of your Instagram profile, they provide a polished look for your Instagram Highlights and draw attention to your best Instagram Story content.

And you don’t have to be a hip influencer to use them. Orgs of all stripes from government institutions to Fortune 500 companies use them to great effect.

Covers are an easy win for any brand that banks on aesthetics. (And on Instagram, that’s everyone.)

The good news is that even if you don’t have access to a graphic design team, they’re easy to make.

We’ll walk you through all the steps to create your own Instagram highlight covers. As a bonus, we have a free pack of icons to help you get started.

How to create an Instagram highlight

How to create a new Instagram highlight from your profile

How to create your own Instagram Highlight covers

5 tips for using Instagram highlight covers and icons

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Create highlights to keep your best Story content at the top of your Instagram profile permanently.

1. In your Story, tap Highlight in the bottom right corner.

2. Choose the Highlight you want to add your Story to.

3. Or, tap New to create a new Highlight, and type out a name for it. Then click Add.

And that’s it! You just created an Instagram highlight.

Have an idea for a new highlight? Or maybe you want to add a few different Stories at once?

Follow these steps to create a new Highlight from your Instagram profile:

1. Go to your profile and tap the +New button (the big plus sign).

2. Pick the Stories you want to add to your new Highlight. Pro tip: Instagram gives you an archive of your stories going back years. So don’t be afraid to do a little digging for those Story gems.

3. Tap Next and name your new Highlight.

4. Choose your Highlight cover, and tap Done.

Don’t have a highlight cover yet? Read on.

Instagram will allow you to use any image you like for your highlight covers.

BUT your brand deserves better than just “any image.”

This space is prime real estate for converting lurkers to followers. You want to leave an impression.

If you’re crunched for time, Adobe Spark has pre-made covers that you can customize and use.

But if you want more control over your Instagram brand, these steps will show you how to easily build a great Instagram highlight cover from scratch (or almost-scratch).

Step 1: Log in to Visme

Log into your account on Visme or create a free account on visme.co.

Step 2: Create a new image that is sized for Stories.

From the main Visme dashboard, click Custom Size in the top right corner, then type in the Instagram Story image dimensions (1080 x 1920 pixels). Click Create! 

Step 3: Get our free icon set

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Once you’re done downloading, unzip the file and choose your favorites. (You can use them with or without our professionally designed backgrounds.)

Step 4: Upload your icons to Visme

Go to My files in the left-hand menu, click Upload, and select the icons you would like to add.

Once you upload the icon image, click on it. If you can’t see your icon on your canvas after you’ve uploaded it, don’t worry. It’s most likely because the icon is white lines on a transparent background. We’ll fix this in the next step.

Step 5: Create your background

Right-click anywhere on your image and click Background. A quick-access background bad will appear in the top left corner of your workspace. Here, you can select a background color, or add a brand color in the HEX code field.

When you change the background color (to anything other than white, your icon will appear).

Step 6: Download your highlight covers from Visme

Name your project. Then click Download in the top right corner. Choose your file type (PNG or JPG are both fine). Then click the Download button.

Download your free pack of 40 customizable Instagram Stories Highlights Icons now. Optimize your profile and set your brand apart from the competition.

Get the free icons right now!

Your cover will be downloaded to your hard drive.

Repeat this process with other cover designs.

Pro tip: Now is a great time to make sure your Instagram account has your Story archive enabled. This is important if you want to go back and see your old Stories without downloading them to your phone.

Step 7: Edit your existing highlights to add your new covers

You no longer have to add an image to your Story (where all your followers will have to swipe past it) in order to make it a highlight cover. Instead, you can just edit the highlight directly:

  1. Go to your Instagram profile.
  2. Tap the highlight whose cover you’d like to change.
  3. Tap More in the bottom right corner.
  4. Tap Edit Highlight.
  5. Tap Edit Cover.
  6. Choose the image icon to access your phone’s photo library.
  7. Choose your beautiful cover.
  8. Tap Done (actually, tap it three times.)

Do this for each of the stories you want to add covers to.

Voila! Your on-brand Instagram highlight covers are now gracing your profile and unifying your look. Magnifique.

5 tips for using Instagram highlight covers and icons

Now that you know how easy it is to make your own unique highlight covers, we’ve got some time-saving tips to make them as effective as possible.

Show off your brand’s aesthetic

Your brand has its favourite colours, font, capitalization—and possibly even some favorite emojis. Your highlight covers are definitely the place to show these off.

That said, keep in mind that less is more. Those little portholes are pretty small, after all. Clarity is key.

Don’t be afraid to experiment

Your Instagram highlights don’t have to do it all. They can do one thing very well.

For instance, Red Bull’s highlights used to be fairly conventional (e.g., Events, Projects, Video, etc.) But now they give each of their athletes their own highlight. All we get is a face, a name, and an emoji. Intriguing.

Meanwhile, the New York Times takes Stories literally. They populate their highlights with exhaustive yet readable primers on complicated political subjects. They also create fun, snackable Stories about appealing subjects.

Either way, their cover style is perfectly consistent, which helps make the wide reach of their topics more manageable.

Be consistent in your organization

There are absolutely no rules when it comes to organizing your Instagram highlights. (Brb, my inner librarian needs to go rail antacids. )

But, some brands organize their highlights like they would their website (e.g., About, Team, FAQ). Some brands organize by collection or product (e.g., Winter ‘20, New Arrivals, Makeup Line).

I’m here to tell you that however you choose to organize, remember to approach it from your audience’s perspective.

In other words: if they know what they’re going to see, they’re more likely to tap.

Highlight the Stories that matters most

Ask yourself what’s most important to your audience. What are they here to see? This season’s collection? Today’s schedule? Or something that is useful for the longer-term, like, for instance, how to pair your flagship earbuds?

The Met, for instance, prioritizes potential visitors. It keeps a helpful guide to this week’s exhibitions at the top of its highlight reel.

Convert your audience to customers

With the right covers, you can introduce new eyes to your best shoppable Stories and swipe-up content (if you have an Instagram for business profile with more than 10,000 followers). Try using our shopping bag icon, for instance.

For more tips on selling products using your Instagram Stories, check out our complete guide to Instagram shopping.

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How to Create Instagram Stories Highlights Cover + Free Icons!

Instagram Stories Highlights covers are a great way to keep your Instagram profile on-brand and take your aesthetic to the next level!

And with the right design, your covers can drive more views to your Highlights — generating valuable extra airtime for your Instagram Stories content.

So if you’re looking to level-up your Instagram Stories Highlights covers, but not sure where to start, this post is your step-by-step guide to success.

Plus, we’ve created a FREE set of cover icons that you can use right now!

What Makes a Good Instagram Stories Highlights Cover?

Instagram Stories Highlights are located directly below your Instagram bio (aka front and center on your profile) — which means your choice of covers can make or break the first impression of your brand.

The good news is that there are easy ways to capitalize on this prime real estate!

Here are our top design tips for Instagram Stories Highlights covers:

Tip #1: Create Instagram Stories Highlight Covers that Elevate Your Brand Aesthetic

Incorporating your brand assets into your covers is an excellent way to make your Highlights feel more cohesive and professional.

Consider how your brand colors, fonts, and design trademarks can be incorporated into your covers.  

For example, Glossier uses all plain white covers, which is a nod to the minimal white packaging of their products.

While Her.HQ, Neighborhood Goods, and The Good Trade use brand colors and fonts to make their covers feel super on-brand. 

From playful patterns to bespoke lettering, there are endless opportunities to tap into your brand aesthetic to create your Highlights covers!   

Tip #2: Make Your Instagram Stories Highlights Covers Descriptive

A beautiful aesthetic may go a long way, but your Highlights covers should also act as a visual signpost for the content they contain. 

A good Instagram Stories Highlight cover will make it as easy as possible for your audience to understand what they’ll get from viewing a highlight.

Descriptive covers will encourage more taps, which means more views for your content!

bareMinerals and Hungry Hipsters use block letters and illustrations — while at Later we use clear icons to make our Instagram Stories Highlights easy to understand at a glance.

These are all great ways to make your covers more descriptive, without compromising on your overall aesthetic! 

Tip #3: Make Your Instagram Highlights Covers Cohesive

Once you’ve landed on your chosen cover style, it’s important to keep your covers cohesive. 

So if you’ve chosen to use icons for your covers, make sure every highlight cover uses an icon — or at least looks great alongside an icon.  

A mishmash of jarring covers will confuse your aesthetic and could make your brand look less professional on Instagram. 

ColourPop Cosmetics, photographer Jess Meyrick, and Greenhouse are great examples of accounts with strong, cohesive covers — even using consistent sentence casing for their highlights titles!

It’s worth also thinking about the order of your Highlights covers too, and how they will look side-by-side. 

The order of your Instagram Stories Highlights will change if you add a new Instagram Story to an existing Highlight, bringing it to the front of the queue. So if your covers only work in a certain order, you’ll need to keep this in mind!

TIP: Aim to design a new cover before creating a new Instagram Stories Highlight, so your branding can always stay on point!

How to Create Instagram Stories Highlights Covers

Thanks to the rise of design apps, like Over, creating custom and on-brand Instagram Stories Highlights covers has never been easier. 

To give you a head start on the design process, we’ve created a free pack of Instagram Stories Highlights cover icons! 

If you haven’t downloaded the icons yet, just enter your email here:

Once you’ve downloaded the pack on desktop, you can transfer the PNG icons to your mobile and use a design app to edit, or open the PSD file directly in Photoshop. 

HACK: If design isn’t your thing, we’ve got you covered! Look out for the “Covers” folder in the download, which includes several ready-made designs that are good to go!

Quick and Easy Option: Use the Over App

Over is packed full of easy-to-use tools that will make your Instagram Stories Highlights covers pop! 

ICYMI: Over’s Head of Brand Matt Riley hosted an exclusive session at LaterCon! Missed the live play? Catch up on all the action here!

To start off, you’ll need to transfer your downloaded icons to your mobile (by AirDrop, email, or message) and open the Over app.

In the Over app, you can import your own background by selecting “Image”, or select from a whole range of cool background designs by browsing their “Layout Collections”.

For this example, we’re selecting one of Over’s free layouts as a background, but you can choose any color, design, or even a picture. There are hundreds of cool designs available on Over Pro too!

Once you’ve selected your background, the first thing to do is to make sure it’s the right size! 

Tap on the “Layers” icon, and then select the background layer. You can then select the “Instagram Story” dimension.

From this same editing window, you can also change the background color of your design to align with your brand. Tap “Background”, and either use the scrollbar to select a color, or enter you chosen Hex color code. 

And once you’re happy with the color and dimension, you can go back into the layers panel to delete any unwanted layers, such as text. 

Now your canvas is ready to go, you add your icons or text! Select “Image” and select an icon from your media library.

Pinch to resize, and reposition until the yellow guidelines pop up — this is the best way to know that you’re placing the icon right in the center of the template. 

TIP: Add your icons to your “Favorites” folder to make them easier to find from the Over app!

If you’d rather have text on your Instagram Stories Highlights covers, tap the “Text” icon from the bottom panel and select a font. And with Over Pro, you can even import a custom font.

Once you’re happy with your designs, tap the yellow checkmark in the top right-hand corner, and then the export icon. Select “Save” and the design will be added to your photos!

Advanced Option: Use Photoshop on Desktop

If you’re more of a design whizz, you may want to use Adobe Photoshop to create your Instagram Stories Highlights covers.

Our free pack of Instagram Stories Highlights cover icons contains a PSD file with everything you need to get going, but you can use Photoshop’s advanced tools to further customize your designs! 

In the layer panel, hide every icon from view (aside from the one you’re working on) by unchecking the eye symbol.

Then, position your chosen icon in the center of the canvas. To edit the icon, right click the layer and select “Rasterize”. 

Once the layer is rasterized, you can edit the icon’s color palette to better suit your brand aesthetic.

With Photoshop, you can play with customized brushes, color variations, compositions and layouts — giving you extra flexibility to communicate your brand in a different way. 

How to Add Your Newly Designed Instagram Stories Highlights Covers

Now you’ve created your Instagram Stories Highlights covers, it’s time to put them into action! 

Option 1: Add a Cover to a New Highlight

After you’ve selected the stories for a new highlight, you’ll be prompted to choose a title and select your cover photo.

From here, you can upload your new cover designs from your camera roll!

Tap “Edit Cover” and then tap on the photo icon to upload a design you created earlier.

Pinch and drag your cover to make the icons bigger or smaller. You can also edit the title of your Instagram Stories Highlight by clicking in the “Name” field and typing a new title.  

Option 2: Add a Cover to an Existing Highlight

If you want to update the cover photo of an existing Highlight, start by opening the Highlight and tapping the ellipsis button in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Select “Edit Highlight,” “Edit Cover,” and then tap on the photo icon to upload a design you created earlier.

It’s that easy! 

Creating Instagram Stories Highlights covers is a quick and easy way to revamp your Instagram profile and highlight your awesome stories!

So putting some time and effort into creating high-quality highlights covers can help you increase brand awareness, attract new followers, and showcase your most valuable Instagram Stories content to new visitors.  

Get a head start on your designs by downloading our free pack of Instagram Stories Highlights cover icons now!

How to change the Instagram highlight cover: 2 ways

InstagramSocial media

February 16, 2021

10,428

Once you create an Instagram highlight, you may need to change its cover. If you don't do any customization, the Instagram highlight cover is generated from the story thumbnail that's used. This is far from always convenient, especially if the story consists of two photos or is made with a collage of another type. In this article, we will look at ways to change the cover of the latest on Instagram after it has been created or during the publication process.

Table of contents

How to change the Instagram highlight cover

To change the Instagram highlight cover, you can first pin the desired stories to the highlight. And then move on to editing the covers.

To change the cover, switch to the section with your profile in the official Instagram mobile application and hold your finger on the current one for which you want to change the cover.

Please note

You can enter the current one and click on the 3 dots in the lower right corner near the “More” button, the result of the action will be the same.

The menu will appear. In it you need to select the item “Edit current”.

Next, at the top, click "Edit Cover".

The current cover is displayed. You can use it by selecting the desired area.

Pay attention

You can not only select the desired area, but also enlarge the necessary fragment of the current one.

If you want to install a different cover that you have previously created and downloaded to your phone, click on the image icon below.

The file library on your phone will open. Choose a suitable cover for the current one among the available photos. After selecting the cover you want, click “Done” in the upper right corner.

Please note

The Instagram highlight cover must be 1080 x 1920 pixels. It is usually accepted that a logo, icon or image is placed in the center, which will convey the essence of what is displayed in the current.

After that, it remains to complete the creation of the cover. Click "Done" in the top right corner.

And click “Done” again.

That's it, now the cover will be applied.

Please note

For different stories in the current one, you can use one cover, there are no restrictions on this.

How to change the Instagram highlight cover when creating it

If you're just creating an Instagram highlight, you can set the desired cover right away. This will eliminate the possibility that other users will notice a poorly designed “Relevant” block in your profile.

In order to be able to choose a cover when creating an actual one on Instagram, you need to create it through the profile page. Switch to the profile section and click on the “+” under the “Edit profile” button.

Select a story, or multiple stories, that you want to be live and click "Next" in the top right corner.

Enter a title for the story. And here you can edit its cover.

Proceed to choose cover art from images on your device.

Select the desired cover and click “Done”.

Next, complete the creation of the cover by clicking “Finish” again in the upper right corner.

And then click “Add” in the upper right corner.

A new item will be created in the current one, and it will immediately receive the customized cover.

How to add Instagram highlights and make covers

May 5 Social Media Instructions

Content:

Topical, "eternal stories", Stories Highlights - all these are multiple names of the same tool on the Instagram social network. This handy feature is designed to save stories that normally disappear after 24 hours. In Actual, you can post important information that the user will see immediately after the profile header.

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What are current stories

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A live audience is engagement, engagement is activity and the best ranking by Instagram algorithms. After cleaning, you can put spam protection in InstaHiro.

Instagram stories are an effective way to interact with subscribers and attract the attention of customers. But "stories" have one feature - they disappear 24 hours after publication. If you want to keep important stories on your profile for a long time, the Stories Highlights or Highlights option will come to your rescue.

In actual stories, you can save any important stories that will be available for viewing all the time. This tool is very handy for personal blogging, but is especially indispensable for commercial accounts.

Finding the Topical section is not difficult - it is located immediately below the profile header and looks like a row of round icons. Under each icon, you can save from one to many stories, united by a theme. For each such album, you can give your name up to 16 characters long and customize the cover.

What can be put in actual stories

  • Stories-acquaintance for new subscribers and facts about you.
  • Stories related to a theme: sports, travel, business, looks, cosmetics reviews, children, etc.

  • Catalog with photos or videos of products that are in stock.
  • Price list for your goods or services.
  • A link to a payment page where you can sell a product or service (you don't even need to have your own website).
  • Customer reviews of your products or services.

  • Promotions and discounts that are currently in effect.
  • Profile navigation.
  • Portfolio of a make-up artist, photographer and other masters.

  • Instructions, such as how to place an order or get to a store.

How to add relevant stories to Instagram

It is not at all difficult to create a Relevant section and add the necessary stories to it. There are two ways to do this: from active stories posted less than 24 hours ago, and from an archive where all published stories are saved.

  • From stories

To prevent stories from disappearing 24 hours after they've been posted, you can add particularly important or interesting stories to the Highlights section. To do this, open the history and click on the "Select" button located at the bottom of the screen. After that, save the story in one of the old or new sections of the Actual.

  • Archived

All stories are automatically saved to the archive if there is a corresponding mark in the stories settings.

Therefore, even after the disappearance of the stories from the profile, they can be added to the section Actual from the archive. To do this, click on the clock located in the upper left corner of the screen and select Stories Archive.

Then you can select any of the previously published stories, click "Select" and add it to any section of the Featured.

How to make Instagram highlight covers

The default album cover is the first story. But you can easily change it by choosing any other story.

How to set the cover art for the current

  • Click on one of the albums in Stories Highlights.
  • At the bottom right, click "More" and select "Edit Current".

  • Then click Edit Cover.

  • Select any of the stories in this album and click "Done".

  • Here you can edit the name of the section.

Some bloggers and business profiles prefer to use special icons or images in the same style as covers. It looks unusual, makes the profile more accurate and thoughtful.

How to make beautiful covers

  1. Choose the background of the icons that matches the style of your account. The background can be monophonic or not, for example, marble.
  2. Find and download a set of icons on a transparent background and overlay them on your background. Below we will tell you on which sites you can download any icons for free.
  3. In addition, you can use one of the handy applications for creating covers, which we will also discuss below.
  4. Upload ready-made templates to stories, add them to the appropriate albums and set them as covers.

Rules for the covers of eternal stories

  • Uniform styling.

  • Uniform color range.
  • Single image size on the background.
  • Different images for all covers, reflecting the theme of the albums.

  • Cover images centered.
  • Pictures should not be too small.

  • Album title must be limited to 10 characters to display in full.
  • If an inscription is used instead of a picture, it must not duplicate the title of the album.

Services for creating Instagram covers

A variety of applications and programs can be used to create the covers of the current Instagram. Here we will give some examples and tell you how these services can be useful for you