How to Pin a Post on Instagram
Three slots at the top of the grid, and they are the first thing a visitor reads before deciding to follow.
How to pin a post on Instagram: open the post or Reel on your profile, tap the three-dot menu and choose Pin to your profile. It moves to the top of your grid with a small pin icon. You can pin up to three at a time; to add a fourth, unpin one first.
A pinned post is a post you have fixed to the top of your profile grid, where it stays regardless of how old it is or how many posts you publish after it.
Pinning changes one thing: the order of your grid. It does not resend the post to anyone's feed. Its value is that the first three tiles a visitor sees are now chosen by you rather than by date.
The three pinned slots are the most valuable space on an Instagram profile, and most accounts either leave them empty or fill them by accident.
Think about how people arrive on a profile. They tap your name under a Reel they liked, on a comment, in a collab post, in a tag. They have seen one thing you made. Now they are deciding, usually in a few seconds, whether to follow. What they look at is the header, the follower count, and the first row of the grid.
Without pins, that first row is whatever you posted last. It might be your best work. It might be a story reshare, an announcement for something that ended, or a post that flopped. With pins, it is the three posts that best answer the visitor's question: what will I get if I follow this account?
That is why the limit of three matters. It is the width of one row on the grid, so pinned posts fill exactly the space a visitor sees without scrolling on most phones.
Pins work on the conversion side, not the reach side. They do not bring anyone to the profile; they decide what happens once someone is there. The header number does part of the same job, which is why accounts that care about the visit-to-follow step pay attention to Instagram followers and to the first row together.
How do you pin a post on Instagram, step by step?
The steps are the same for photos, carousels and Reels, and the option has been in the app since 2022.
- 1. Go to your profile and tap the post or Reel you want at the top.
- 2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top right corner of the post, or on the right side of a Reel.
- 3. Choose Pin to your profile.
- 4. Go back to your grid. The post now sits in the first row with a white pin icon in its corner.
- 5. Repeat for up to three posts. To change the set later, unpin one and pin its replacement.
How many posts can you pin on Instagram?
Three, as of October 2026. If three posts are already pinned, unpin one before pinning another.
The pinned set can mix formats. Two Reels and a carousel, three photos, any combination works, because pinning applies to anything that appears on your main grid.
What cannot be pinned to the grid is a Story. Stories you want to keep on your profile go into Highlights, which sit above the grid in their own row. Highlights and pins do similar jobs for different formats, and a well-kept profile uses both.
Pinned posts stay pinned indefinitely. There is no expiry, which is the main reason they go stale: a promotion pinned in spring is still the first thing visitors see in autumn unless you remember to change it.
Can you pin a Reel to your Instagram profile?
Yes. Reels can be pinned exactly like photos, from the three-dot menu on the Reel. A pinned Reel shows in the top row of your main grid like any pinned post.
Reels are often the strongest choice for a pin, because they are usually what brought the visitor in. Someone who tapped through from a Reel has already shown that your video works for them; a second strong Reel at the top of the grid confirms that it was not a one-off.
The tile shows the Reel's cover, not a frame chosen at random, so it is worth checking that the cover reads at grid size. A cover with small text can be illegible once it is cropped to the square-ish grid tile.
The Reels tab of a profile prints a view count on each tile, and opening a Reel shows its counts to any visitor. That is part of why many accounts pin their most-watched Reels, and why views on Instagram Reels end up mattering most on the ones that are pinned.
Do pinned posts get more views?
They get more views from your profile, because they are the first thing profile visitors see. They do not get more views from anywhere else.
Pinning does not re-share a post, put it back into followers' feeds or make it eligible for recommendation again. The feed and Reels distribution are decided by how viewers respond, and an old post's position on your grid does not change that.
So the effect of a pin depends on how many people visit your profile. If profile visits are low, pins are seen by few people. If you get steady visits from Reels, collabs and tags, pins are seen by nearly all of them. Profile visits on Instagram explains how that number is counted and where to read it.
To judge whether a pin is working, look at the post's insights for profile activity, including follows where Instagram shows them, rather than its raw views. A pin's job is to turn a visit into a follow.
How do you unpin a post on Instagram?
Open the pinned post, tap the three-dot menu, and choose Unpin from profile. The post returns to its original place in the grid, by date, with all its likes and comments untouched.
Unpinning is instant and reversible. Nothing about the post changes except its position, so there is no cost to rotating pins regularly.
If you are replacing a pin, unpin first and then pin the new post. That avoids the app choosing which pin to drop for you.
A useful habit is to review pins whenever something on the profile changes: a new offer, a new series, a format that started working. Pins should describe the account as it is now.
What should you pin on Instagram?
Pin for the visitor who does not know you yet. They need to understand what the account is, see that it is good, and see what to do next.
A common structure that does that in three tiles:
The post that best explains what the account is about. A short Reel that says it in seconds, or a carousel that shows the range of what you make.
Your strongest proof. Usually the post or Reel that performed best, because its numbers and comments are visible and tell the visitor other people valued it. Tapping the count opens the names behind it, and who liked your post explains why that list can be shorter than the figure.
The current call to action. A launch, a product, a series, a link in bio worth tapping. This is the slot that needs changing most often.
What not to pin: anything time-limited that has expired, a post whose comments are mostly complaints, and three near-identical posts. The row should show range, not repetition. For the wider question of what makes visitors follow, growing followers organically covers the rest of the profile.
What pins cannot fix
A pin cannot make a weak post persuasive. If your three best posts do not convince visitors, the problem is the content, and no ordering will solve it.
It cannot bring traffic. Pins work only on people who already arrived.
And it cannot hide the header. The follower count, bio and profile picture are read before or alongside the first row, so a strong pinned row under an empty bio still loses visitors.
The parts work together: the header says who you are, the Instagram followers figure tells a stranger how many others decided to stay, and the pinned row shows why. Every Instagram service is on the Instagram page, and if your pinned posts' like counts are what a visitor reads first, Instagram likes cover that figure.
Questions people ask about pinned posts
How many posts can you pin on Instagram?
Three at a time, as of October 2026. They can be any mix of photos, carousels and Reels. To pin a fourth, unpin one of the current three first.
Can other people see my pinned posts?
Yes. Anyone who can see your profile sees the pinned posts first in the grid, marked with a pin icon. On a private account, that means your approved followers.
Does pinning a post reshare it to followers?
No. Pinning only changes the order of your profile grid. The post is not sent back into anyone's feed and gets no new distribution from being pinned.
Can you pin a Story to your Instagram profile?
Not to the grid. Stories are kept on a profile through Highlights, which sit above the grid in their own row. Pinning works only for posts and Reels.
Why can't I pin a post on Instagram?
Usually because three are already pinned, or the app needs updating. You can only pin posts on your own profile, and the option is in the three-dot menu of the post itself.
Does unpinning a post delete anything?
No. The post returns to its date position in the grid with its likes, comments and views unchanged. Pinning and unpinning only move it.
Keep reading
- Instagram followers — A visitor reads the follower count in the header alongside the pinned row, and Instagram followers change that count.
- profile visits on Instagram — Pins only work on people who reach your profile, and profile visits on Instagram explains how that number is counted.
- who liked your post — The counts under a pinned post open into lists, and who liked your post covers where to read them.