How to Delete Pins on Pinterest
Deleting is permanent and takes the pin's whole history with it, which is why the right answer is often to move it instead.
To delete pins on Pinterest, open the pin, click the three-dot menu, and choose Delete. Confirm, and it is gone permanently.
To remove several at once, open the board, click the edit or organize control, select the pins with the checkboxes that appear, and choose to delete or move the selection.
There is no undo. A deleted pin takes its saves, its comments and its accumulated impressions with it, and re-uploading the same image starts a new pin from zero.
Which is why, for anything that was ever working, moving or archiving is usually the better action than deleting.
The reason deletion is more costly on Pinterest than on a timeline platform comes down to how pins age.
On a feed-based platform, a post has a moment. It is distributed over hours, it accumulates whatever it accumulates, and then it is effectively finished. Deleting a three-year-old Instagram post costs you nothing anyone would notice.
Pinterest is a search and interest engine. A pin has no expiry, and the engine keeps evaluating it. A pin published two years ago can start receiving traffic this month because somebody's search finally matched it, and pins commonly do most of their work long after they were posted.
What makes that possible is accumulated signal: the saves it has collected, the boards it has been saved to, and the engagement history attached to that specific pin. All of it is attached to the pin, not to the image.
So deleting and re-uploading a better version of the same image is not an improvement. It is throwing away every signal the first one earned and starting the clock again. Pinterest will treat the new upload as a new pin with no history, and it will take as long to establish itself as the original did.
If the image is fine and the problem is the board, the title or the destination link, those can all be edited in place without losing anything.
Removing a single pin
On the web, open the pin from your profile or board. The three-dot menu sits near the top of the pin; Delete is in it, with a confirmation step.
In the mobile app, open the pin, tap the three dots at the top right, and choose Delete.
If you see Hide rather than Delete, you are looking at somebody else's pin that you saved, not one you created. Hiding tells Pinterest to show you less like it; deleting is only available on pins you own.
And if you only want it off a particular board, the edit screen lets you change the board rather than removing the pin from the account.
Clearing out a board in bulk
Open the board and look for the organize or edit control, usually an icon above the pin grid.
Selecting it puts a checkbox on every pin. Tick the ones you want, and the action bar offers move, copy and delete for the whole selection.
There is a selection limit per batch, so a board with hundreds of pins takes several passes.
Deleting the board itself is a separate action in the board's own settings, and it removes every pin on it. If the pins are worth keeping, move them to another board first — once the board goes, so do they.
Unsaving somebody else's pin
This is what most people mean by undoing a pin, and it is a different operation.
A pin you saved from someone else lives on your board as a copy. Deleting your copy removes it from your board and does nothing to the original.
The original creator keeps their pin, their saves count includes yours historically, and nothing is reported to them.
If you saved to the wrong board, use the edit option to change the board rather than deleting and saving again. Re-saving creates a fresh copy and loses the position in your board's order.
Archiving a board instead of deleting it
Pinterest has an archive for boards, and it is underused.
An archived board disappears from your profile and stops appearing in your own feed, but the pins on it remain live in Pinterest's index. They can still be found in search, still be saved by others, and still send traffic to whatever they link to.
That is precisely what you want for seasonal content, for a campaign that has ended, or for an old niche you have moved on from. The profile looks current and the work keeps earning.
Deleting that same board removes the pins from the index entirely, and everything they were still producing stops.
Editing instead, when the pin is nearly right
Most reasons to delete are fixable without deleting.
The destination link can be changed, which is the usual case — a pin pointing at a dead page is worth repairing rather than discarding, because it still carries its history.
The title, the description and the board can all be edited in place.
The image cannot. If the image itself is the problem, a new pin is unavoidable, and in that case the old one should come down only after the new one has established itself rather than at the same moment.
Alt text is editable too and is worth adding on anything that gets traffic, because Pinterest reads it.
What deleting does to your account's picture
Nothing dramatic, and it is worth saying because people expect a penalty.
Deleting pins does not damage an account's standing. There is no signal that treats removal as suspicious, and clearing out genuinely poor old work is reasonable maintenance.
What it does affect is your own statistics. Impressions and saves attached to deleted pins come out of your totals, so a big clear-out produces a chart that looks like a collapse and is not.
The practical advice is to delete in small batches and to keep anything still receiving impressions, however old and however unfashionable. On a platform where a pin's best month can be its twentieth, age is not a reason to remove something.
Questions people ask about removing pins
How do I delete a pin I created?
Open it, use the three-dot menu, and choose Delete. It is permanent and takes the pin's saves and impressions with it.
How do I undo a pin I saved by mistake?
Delete your copy from your board. The original is unaffected and the creator is not notified. If you only saved it to the wrong board, edit the board instead of re-saving.
Can I delete lots of pins at once?
Yes. Open the board, use the organize or edit control, tick the pins and delete the selection. There is a limit per batch, so large boards take several passes.
Does deleting a board delete its pins?
Yes. Move anything worth keeping to another board first, or archive the board instead, which hides it while leaving the pins live in search.
Should I delete and re-upload a better version?
Usually not. The new upload starts with no history, and the saves and engagement the original accumulated are what made it findable. Edit the title, description or link instead where you can.
Does deleting pins hurt my account?
No. It is ordinary maintenance. It does reduce your reported impressions and saves, so a large clear-out makes your own statistics look worse than performance actually is.
Keep reading
- engagement on a pin — A pin's accumulated signal is what keeps it findable years later, and engagement on a pin acts on the part of that record you can still influence.
- which number actually predicts traffic — Impressions and saves tell you different things, and which number actually predicts traffic is worth reading before a clear-out.
- how old pins keep sending visits — The reason age is not a reason to delete is how old pins keep sending visits, which is unique to this platform.