If you’re an Instagram aficionado or aspiring content creator like me, you’ve probably wondered if someone is saving your Story Highlights for later.
After all, you’ve poured a lot of effort into it, right? I definitely understand how it can be encouraging and awesome to know that someone appreciates your content so much that they’re screenshotting it!
Well, in this guide, I’ve done some Insta-sleuthing to finally determine how screenshotting Instagram Story Highlights works. Read on to discover the story behind those screenshots!
Can you see who takes screenshots of your Instagram highlights?
Unfortunately, there’s no way for you to see if someone screenshots your Instagram Story Highlights. After all, the platform doesn’t have a dedicated feature that detects whenever someone grabs a screenshot of the content posted by other users.
In theory, anyone visiting your Instagram profile page and accessing your story highlights can watch it and more. If they decide to screenshot all of your content for whatever reason, they can do so without worrying about you knowing about it.
Sadly, it’s the reality of posting content on social media platforms and making it available for public viewing. If it’s any consolation, Instagram does give you a list of accounts viewing your story highlights to help you monitor your audience.
However, you must note that your Instagram story highlights will only list its viewers within 24 hours of posting. Any views beyond that time frame will no longer appear on the viewer list.
Regardless of its limitations, this lets you identify your Instagram story highlights avid viewers. With this information, you can decide who to disallow from viewing your future posts by removing them as your followers or blocking their accounts.
If your Instagram account is private and you’re meticulous about the people you accept as followers, this shouldn’t be an issue.
As such, this issue is only a significant concern for public accounts since everyone can access them, even if they’re not on the platform.
In this case, we recommend making your Instagram account private to prevent unwanted third parties from accessing your story highlights. Refer to our instructions below to make your Instagram account private.
Privacy Matters: Control Who Can View Your Instagram Account
| Difficulty | Very Easy ●○○○○ |
| Number of Steps | 7 |
| Time to Perform Fix | 40 seconds |
| Things Needed | A PC or smartphone A working internet connection |
Unsurprisingly, making your Instagram account private is an excellent safeguard for your privacy. This way, you have more control over the people who can view your content or screenshot your story highlights if it does happen.
Therefore, even if you can’t see when someone screenshots your Instagram story highlights, you at least know it’s a person you trust. In the worst-case scenario, this helps you pinpoint the culprit when a screenshot of your highlights becomes public.
After all, only people who receive your approval to follow your account can view your story highlights on Instagram. As a result, anyone who screenshots your content will only be among those with access to it.
| Step 1: Open the Instagram app to log into your account.  |
| Step 2: Tap your account profile icon in the bottom-right corner.  |
| Step 3: Tap the hamburger menu to reveal the additional options.  |
| Step 4: Click Settings and Privacy in the pop-up menu.  |
Step 5: Click Account Privacy. |
Step 6: Turn on the Private Account switch. |
| Step 7: Click Switch to Private to confirm this change.  |
Remember, making your Instagram account private isn’t a foolproof solution to stop others from screenshotting your story highlights. It only lets you control the people who can do this on your account, so it’s more like a mitigation than a proper solution.
Ultimately, the best way to protect yourself is to not post anything on your story highlights that you will regret. Believe it or not, in the neverending life of the Internet, it’s better to be wise about the content you post to be safe now than sorry afterward.
After all, you don’t want your family and friends to see embarrassing content on your Instagram story highlights. Even if you manage to take it down, it will stay in their memory and continue to be the topic of discussion whenever you meet.
Worse, potential employers may see your story highlights, affecting your employment chances. Sadly, once a screenshot of your content becomes available to the public, the Internet will find a way to keep it alive for good and all.
Can someone see when you grab a screenshot of their Instagram Highlight?
On the bright side, not knowing when someone screenshots your Instagram story highlights means you can enjoy the same anonymity. As mentioned, the platform doesn’t have a feature that alerts users when someone screenshots content.
Therefore, you can screenshot another account’s story highlights without risking them knowing about your actions. You can consider this fair game—limitations and privacy protections affect everyone on the platform equally.
Regardless of your reason, this allows you to screenshot story highlights to your heart’s content. Plus, most people save screen grabs of content they like for reference or preservation, not some shady ulterior motive.
For example, taking a screenshot of a story highlight is normal if you think you can learn something from it. Maybe you want to imitate the style to improve your highlights, or you saw an interesting product you want to look up and get for yourself.
So, if you feel strongly about saving a particular story highlight on your phone, you’re free to do so. As mentioned, the only thing the poster can see is that you saw the story highlight.
Even then, you can perform specific measures to prevent them from knowing you saw their story highlights. For instance, you can view the story highlights after the initial 24 hours of posting and grab its screenshot during that period.
This way, you won’t leave any trace of your account being in contact with the target story highlight, let alone save its screenshot.
More importantly, the poster has to perform specific steps to know you saw their Instagram story highlights, which we listed below.
Is it illegal to screenshot someone else’s Instagram Highlights?
While content and information from a person’s online account are their property and subject to data privacy laws, taking a screenshot on your smartphone or PC isn’t illegal per se.
However, you can face legal repercussions depending on how you use the screenshot you took.
So, screenshotting someone’s Instagram story highlights shouldn’t put you in legal trouble unless you publish or distribute it without the owner’s consent. If you only store it as a local copy and for your personal use, there shouldn’t be any issue.
You must avoid reposting your screenshots to claim them as your own or try to make money using them. Doing so infringes the owner or poster’s copyright, which can result in civil or criminal charges depending on your local copyright laws.
However, it’s important to note that some applications of screenshots are legal under fair use. For instance, if the screenshot is transformative and isn’t a substitute for the original material, its application can be considered fair use and legal.
How can you check who viewed your Instagram Stories Highlights?
| Difficulty | Very Easy ●○○○○ |
| Number of Steps | 5 |
| Time to Perform Fix | 20 seconds |
| Things Needed | A PC or smartphone A working internet connection |
To know whether you viewed the target account’s story highlight, the poster must manually check its viewer list using the steps below. However, the poster won’t know if someone screenshots their Instagram story highlights.
You don’t need to worry about anything unless the poster decides to perform these steps. If you’re lucky, the poster might not even check the viewer list or care about who sees it.
Above all, this method only works against you if you view the story highlights in the initial 24-hour period we mentioned. Beyond that, your Instagram username won’t appear on the viewer list regardless of how often you watch the highlight.
By now, the only thing the poster can do is remove the highlight from their Instagram account. Otherwise, everyone with access to it can keep playing or screenshotting it to their heart’s desire.
| Step 1: Open your Instagram app and log into your account.  |
| Step 2: Tap your account profile icon in the bottom-right corner.  |
Step 3: Select a highlight. |
| Step 4: Click the Activity option in the bottom-left corner of the highlight.  Note: Sometimes, this option may have the “Seen by *number*” label instead of Activity. |
| Step 5: Check the list of people who saw your Instagram story highlight.  |
Please note that the activity option won’t appear if the poster adds the story as a highlight after the initial 24-hour period. When this happens, the Instagram story highlights won’t log the accounts that saw it upon posting up to the present.
Therefore, the poster won’t have any way to monitor whoever will likely grab a screenshot of their story highlights. It’s tough enough without a notification alert from Instagram, but it’s even more tricky without a lead to stand on.
It’s the perfect opportunity to screenshot your target story highlights without risking being accused of doing so. It’s unfortunate, but it’s why you must be careful about the content you post and give others access to.
Does Instagram send a notification whenever you screenshot a highlight?
As mentioned, Instagram doesn’t have a notification feature that detects screenshots of content on the platform. It’s understandable since there’s no way for users to see if someone screenshots their Instagram story highlights.
Therefore, you don’t have to worry about the poster receiving a notification whenever you grab a screenshot of their story highlights. After all, others can do the same thing and get away with a screenshot of your story highlights, granted they can access it.
For those familiar with Snapchat, this seems like a baffling omission. On the other hand, it also makes sense because you have control over your account’s privacy settings, the content you want to post, and the people who can access it.
Ultimately, it’s up to you what appears on your Instagram story highlights and the people with permission to watch it.
Thus, it’s your responsibility to observe due diligence and ensure the content you post on your account won’t end with a regrettable result.
In situations like this, the phrase, “Think before you click,” comes to mind.
After all, you must always prioritize your privacy and security, especially with social media platforms where you can interact with all types of people—good, bad, and everything in between.
How to Screenshot Instagram Highlights
| Difficulty | Very Easy ●○○○○ |
| Number of Steps | 6 |
| Time to Perform Fix | 30 seconds |
| Things Needed | A PC or smartphone A working internet connection |
Grabbing a screenshot of an Instagram story highlight is a no-brainer, granted you have access to it. Otherwise, it becomes almost impossible unless you can convince the account owner to approve your “follow request” and let you see their profile page.
After all, it’s where you can watch their Instagram story highlights and take a screenshot using your phone or PC’s built-in screen capture or print screen features.
From there, a simple click of a button or two is enough to secure a screenshot of the story highlight.
Luckily, most smartphones use a two-button combination to make capturing your screen quick and straightforward. Thus, you must know your smartphone’s button combination, which can vary between brands and models.
For example, most iPhones can take screenshots when simultaneously tapping their side and home buttons.
However, as stunning as this screenshot feature is, it doesn’t apply to the iPhone 13 and other Face ID variants since you must simultaneously tap the side and volume up buttons instead.
| Step 1: Open your Instagram app and log into your account.  |
Step 2: Click the Instagram messenger icon. |
Step 3: Select select the target account. Note: If you’re not in contact with the target account, use the search bar to locate it and access its profile page. |
| Step 4: Click View Profile to open the target account’s profile page.  |
Step 5: Click the Highlights circle. |
| Step 6: Quick-press the side and home buttons simultaneously to grab a screenshot of the highlight.  Note: If using an Android phone, quick-press the power and volume down buttons instead. Some Android phones may also have a screenshot button on their quick settings panel, which is accessible by expanding the notification bar. |
After taking the screenshot, you can find the image in your smartphone’s internal storage under the screenshot folder. However, locating the screenshot image on your smartphone’s gallery app is much faster and easier.
Unfortunately, navigating a smartphone’s internal storage varies between brands and models, so it’s up to you to locate the screenshot image via this method. Finding the image in the internal storage lets you copy it, change its file name, and more.
Sadly, the same doesn’t apply when you print screen the Instagram story highlights on a PC. After all, this adds the captured screen to the clipboard, so you must paste it to an image editing software before securing a copy.
For example, you must use software like Microsoft Paint or Adobe Photoshop and paste the screenshot to their canvas. This way, you can save the screenshot as a JPEG or PNG image.
FAQs about Screenshotting Instagram Story Highlights
Other people can’t see if you screenshot their Instagram highlights because this platform doesn’t have that feature, unlike Snapchat. However, it’s a double-edged sword since you can’t tell when someone screenshot your story highlights.
Therefore, screenshotting is fair game on Instagram, and everyone is free to do so as they like. The only way to mitigate this is to set your account private and nitpick the people you accept as followers.
Check your Instagram highlights’ activity to see the list of viewers during its first 24 hours since posting. You can see your highlight’s viewers by clicking the activity option in its bottom-left corner.
You can see when someone likes your Instagram highlights based on the little hearts that appear when you view them. When you click the activity option to see the viewers, you can tell which ones liked the highlight because their profile icons will have a heart.
