Is there anything more frustrating than spotting a mistake in your perfectly curated Instagram carousel after it’s already live? It’s a common digital age woe. Fortunately, Instagram offers a solution allowing you to delete a single image from a carousel post without taking down the entire set. This provides crucial flexibility for editing your published Instagram content.
Why is this feature so important? Instagram carousel posts, often referred to as “photo dumps” by some, are known to generate significantly higher engagement rates compared to standard posts. To maximize this engagement, ensuring your carousels are polished and error-free is key.
Here’s your guide on how to easily remove a photo from an Instagram carousel, fixing those little “oopsies” as you go.
Can You Delete Just One Picture From an Instagram Carousel After Posting?
Yes, you absolutely can delete a single picture from an Instagram carousel after it has been posted. This wasn’t always possible, but Instagram introduced this very helpful feature back in November 2021. Social media managers and regular users alike rejoiced at this update, which was announced by Instagram head Adam Mosseri himself on Instagram.
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However, there’s one important limitation to keep in mind: you cannot delete a photo from a carousel if it only contains two photos. The delete function is available for carousels with three or more images. You can remove images to edit down a larger carousel, but you cannot reduce a carousel to a single image using this method. At least two photos must remain in the carousel after your edits.
How to Delete One Photo from an Instagram Carousel Post: Step-by-Step
Let’s walk through the process of deleting a photo from your Instagram carousel. For this example, let’s imagine we want to remove a particular image from a carousel.
Step 1: Navigate to the Instagram carousel you wish to edit and tap the three dots located in the top right corner of the post. This icon opens the post options menu.
Step 2: From the menu that appears at the bottom of your screen, select Edit. This will put your carousel post into editing mode, allowing you to make changes.
Step 3: Once in edit mode, look at the top left corner of each photo in the carousel. You will now see a trash can icon on each image. To delete a specific photo, simply tap the trash can icon on that image.
Instagram carousel edit mode with trash icon for deleting a photo
Step 4: Instagram will prompt a confirmation to ensure you want to delete the selected photo. Tap Delete to confirm your decision. It’s important to note that even after deleting, you have a 30-day window to restore the photo if you change your mind.
Step 5: After deleting the photo, tap Done in the top right corner of the screen to save your changes. This final step is crucial to apply the deletion and update your carousel post.
How to Recover a Deleted Photo from an Instagram Carousel
Mistakes happen, or perhaps you reconsidered your edit. Fortunately, Instagram provides a way to restore photos you’ve deleted from a carousel, within a certain timeframe. Here’s how to get a deleted photo back.
Step 1: Go to your Instagram profile and tap the three horizontal lines in the top right corner. This opens the main menu. From this menu, select Your activity.
Step 2: In the ‘Your activity’ menu, scroll down until you find and tap the Recently Deleted option. This section contains all content you’ve deleted recently.
Step 3: Within the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder, you will see all media deleted within the last 30 days, including photos from carousels. Locate the photo you wish to restore and select it.
Step 4: Once you’ve selected the photo, tap Restore from the pop-up menu that appears at the bottom of the screen.
Step 5: Instagram will again ask for confirmation to ensure you want to restore the photo. Tap Restore one more time to finalize the recovery process. The photo will be returned to its original position in your Instagram carousel.
Steps to restore a deleted image on Instagram within 30 days
While the ability to delete photos from Instagram carousels is a helpful editing tool, frequent corrections might appear unprofessional. Remember that in the digital age, screenshots are permanent. Ideally, minimize errors by thoroughly planning your social media content strategy.
Utilizing the right tools can significantly aid in content management. Hootsuite, for example, allows you to draft, preview, and schedule all your Instagram content, including carousels, posts, Stories, and Reels. Integrated platforms like Canva enhance this process, making it easy to create visually appealing carousel graphics with correct sizing and dimensions.
Hootsuite’s intuitive calendar view provides a clear overview of all your scheduled content across various platforms, helping you ensure everything is perfect before it goes live.
Hootsuite content calendar for planning Instagram posts
Efficiently manage your Instagram presence alongside all your social media channels and save valuable time by using Hootsuite. From a unified dashboard, you can schedule and publish carousels, edit images, and effectively measure your social media performance. Experience it today with a free trial.
Grow on Instagram with ease. Create, analyze, and schedule your Instagram posts, Stories, Reels, and Threads all with Hootsuite. Streamline your workflow and achieve better results.
