Instagram Adds a New “Recently Deleted” Feature for Removed Content
The popular social networking app Instagram is now introducing a new feature called “Recently Deleted” to provide its users with the opportunity to review their deleted content before removing it permanently.
From now on, when a user deletes any content from their account, it will be moved to the “Recently Deleted” folder instantly.
Users will then have the option to either permanently remove that content or put it back on their profile if they change their mind later on by restoring it from the same “Recently Deleted” folder.
Content such as photos and videos from your profile and Instagram Story, Instagram Stories from your highlights and story archive, reels, direct messages, and IGTV videos will be saved in this folder when you delete it.
All content moved to the Recently Deleted folder will be permanently deleted after 30 days automatically. However, in this case, Instagram stories are an exception as they will remain in the folder for up to 24 hours from when they were initially posted.
Within those 30 days, if a user wishes to see what content they have removed from their profile, they can review it by going to the “Recently Deleted” folder present in the “Account” tab under the “Settings” option.
However, ensure that you are currently using the up-to-date version of the Instagram app before counting on the “Recently Deleted” feature to save your deleted content.
Another Use Case for the “Recently Deleted” Feature
While this feature will surely come in handy for users when they want to restore the content they have removed from their account earlier, Instagram has highlighted another great use case for it.
The social media platform has pointed out how this new feature can help safeguard the users’ content in case their Instagram account gets hacked at any point in time.
At times, the hacker removes all the content from the hacked profile, and in case the content is not stored on the users’ device, they are left with no option to get it back.
Therefore, apart from introducing this new “Recently Deleted” folder, the platform is also adding some security shields against removing content permanently from an account.
Due to this, users will have to verify their identity as the account owner before they can delete or restore any content from the “Recently Deleted” folder.
Instagram Archive vs. Recently Deleted
According to Instagram, the platform users have actually requested the “Recently Deleted” feature frequently.
However, that is an interesting fact, considering the app has always had something similar to this feature called Archive.
Earlier, when a user wanted to remove a particular piece of content from their account instead of deleting it permanently, they had the option to archive it simply.
Users can restore or permanently delete any content from the Instagram Archive folder at any point in time. And as far as we know, there is no restriction to how much content a single account can archive or how long the archived content can stay within the Archive folder.
In a nutshell, users have the option to archive any content they want to remove from their profile and have the ability to restore it weeks, months, or even years later. Once the user has archived any content, nobody except the account user who posted it in the first place can access it.
So to conclude, the Instagram Archive feature seems to be far better than the Recently Deleted feature in many ways when it comes to storing the removed content. However, that’s only if the user remembers to manually “archive” their content.
In that regard, an obvious advantage of the Recently Deleted feature is that it is automatic, meaning the users don’t need to remember to use it because it is done for them automatically. If a user deletes a piece of content by mistake rather than archiving it, it can still be restored since it will be saved to the Recently Deleted folder automatically.
Nevertheless, the Instagram Archive feature is not going anywhere, meaning you can still use it as a backup option. If you feel that the 30 days time limit given by the Recently Deleted feature isn’t enough for you, you can always move your content to the Archive folder instead.
Wrapping It Up
Instagram is adding another exciting feature called Recently Deleted, which was regularly requested by the users as per the platform. With this new feature’s launch, the deleted content from the users’ profiles can be reviewed, restored, and removed permanently. However, the deleted content will only stay in the Recently Deleted folder for up to 30 days, and after that, it will be gone forever. This feature is indeed useful for users who accidentally delete their content instead of archiving it. While this new feature might sound a lot similar to the existing Archive feature, there are still some differences – the most prominent one is that the Recently Deleted feature is automatic while the Archive feature is manual.