Instagram on Android gains ‘Recently Deleted’ section that lets you restore recent posts

Damien Wilde | Feb 3 2021 - 4:09 am PT

As probably the world’s biggest photo-sharing app, Instagram has seen many overhauls and changes. The latest update is adding a “Recently Deleted” section to Instagram on Android and iOS that will let you restore recent posts.

The new feature was confirmed as rolling out in an official announcement blog post and is set to begin rolling out to the Android and iOS apps from today. This brand-new section will allow you to actually restore posts that have recently been deleted from your Instagram account, while simultaneously allowing you to remove clutter from your public-facing page.

While this shares similarities to the Google Photos recently deleted feature, this is more inline with how Instagram works as a social network rather than a photo storage tool. This new “Recently Deleted” section includes stills, IGTV videos, stories, and the new Reels.

When deleting content from your profile, you will have to verify that you are the account holder before items are permanently deleted or restored to your account. You’ll have up to 30 days to restore or permanently delete any content – beyond that, Instagram will delete anything. Stories are the only exception; anything not within your archive will be removed after 24 hours.

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.

To access the Recently Deleted section, you can head to Settings > Account > Recently Deleted, provided you have the very latest build of Instagram on your Android device.