How to Delete a Story on Facebook: An In-Depth 2023 Guide
Facebook stories allow you to share photo and video updates that disappear after 24 hours. They appear in a bar at the top of News Feed. With over 1 billion daily story viewers, this feature has become incredibly popular since launching in 2017. However, there may be times when you need to remove a story you‘ve posted. This comprehensive guide will teach you how to quickly and easily delete Facebook stories.
How Do Facebook Stories Work?
To understand how to delete stories, let‘s first see how they work.
When you post a photo or video to your Story, it appears in the story bar at the top of the News Feed on mobile and desktop. Tapping on your profile picture opens a full-screen view of your story.
[Insert image demonstrating Facebook story UI on mobile News Feed]
Image caption: Facebook stories appear at the top of News Feed Friends and followers can view, like, and comment on your story. They can also message you about that individual story. Additionally, you‘ll be able to see a list of who has seen your story in the past 24 hours.
According to Facebook, stories with interactive elements like polls, questions and location stickers see much higher average view times compared to standard photo and video posts.
Once posted, stories have a 24 hour expiration time. After that time period, they disappear from the story bar and associated places across all connected surfaces like Messenger and Instagram. Deleted stories also get removed from Facebook servers eventually. We‘ll cover the details of this process later in this guide.
Now that we‘ve seen what stories are and how they work, let‘s get right into how to remove them from Facebook.
A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Delete a Facebook Story
Deleting a story is straightforward whether you use the mobile app or desktop site. When removed, stories automatically disappear from all connected services. Here‘s how it works:
Deleting a Facebook Story on Mobile
- Open the Facebook app on your Android or iOS device
- Tap on Your Story at the top
- Locate the story want to delete
- Long press on the story to prompt the menu
- Tap Delete to confirm removal
Once deleted, the story no longer appears in your archive or the story bar. Friends who have already seen it won‘t be able to see it again either.
Deleting a Facebook Story on Desktop
- Go to Facebook in your browser and log in
- Click on your profile picture
- Select Story Archive from the left menu
- Click the three dot menu on the story
- Choose Delete Photo/Video to remove
The process works the same way. The story gets eliminated from all surfaces across Facebook and Messenger.
An important caveat is that deleted stories still exist on Facebook‘s servers for some time before being permanently erased. We‘ll cover exactly how this works later on.
First, let‘s talk about what to do if you want to keep a record of stories you‘re choosing to remove from public view.
Archiving Stories Before Deleting
Rather than losing old stories forever when you delete them, the Archive feature allows preserving them privately. You can save stories to the archive whether they‘re brand new or expired.
Here‘s how it works:
On Mobile:
- Create or open an existing story
- Tap Save at the bottom
- Select Save to Archive
On Desktop:
- Click the three dot menu on the story
- Choose Save to Archive
Archived stories won‘t auto-delete like public stories. You can access them anytime by going to Story Archive on your profile.
Now let‘s go over how recovering previously archived stories works.
Retrieving Archived Stories
- Go to your profile page
- Select Story Archive
- Tap the story you want to retrieve
- Choose Share
This will post the archived story back to the public story bar again. It will now follow the usual 24 deletion lifecycle.
Having covered archiving, let‘s get into what to do if you run into issues deleting Facebook stories.
Troubleshooting Problems Deleting Stories
In some cases, technical issues may prevent removing stories properly. Here are troubleshooting tips for common deletion problems:
Story not deleting: Refresh and retry. If still stuck, log out and back in. Confirm you have permissions to manage that content.
Deleted story still visible: Give it some time to disappear from view. If it persists longer than expected, try clearing website cache/app data or reporting the content to Facebook for removal.
Getting notifications for deleted story: Check notification settings for that story post. Switch them off or mute story.
Broken links in deleted stories: Either remove the story or edit it to take out the invalid link before deleting.
If a deleted story still shows in your archive, delete it from there as an additional step. Contact Facebook support if these troubleshooting tips don‘t resolve the issue.
Now let‘s explore how to control exactly who gets to view your Facebook stories.
Customizing Facebook Story Privacy
By default, stories are visible to all friends following you. However, you may wish to tighten up who can access specific stories. Fortunately, customizing privacy is straightforward:
On Mobile:
- Tap the ⋮ menu on the story
- Select Story Settings
- Choose an option: Public, Friends, or Custom lists
- Save preferences
On Desktop:
- Click the ⋮ menu on the story
- Choose Edit Story Settings
- Select an audience under Who Can View Your Story section
- Save selections
You can always change settings later to expand or contract access. Additionally, hiding a story completely works if needed for personal reasons. Restricted contacts will not be able view that content then.
Now that you know how to manage settings and visibility, let‘s get into Facebook‘s built-in tools for taking stories to the next level visually!
Creating Engaging Facebook Stories
While simple photo and video stories work great, you can utilize built-in creative tools to make them truly stand out:
Backgrounds
Add color gradients, patterns and textures as backgrounds. For example, bright colors for an exciting event or black background for a movietrailer.
Stickers & Emojis
Express emotions and reactions. Fun animations and overlays also add personality.
Text & Drawing
Add captions, titles and even handwritten notes using the integrated drawing tool.
Effects & Filters
Augmented Reality (AR) effects, creative filters, animated text effects and more enable next-level visual storytelling.
Location Tagging
Let your friends know where you are and what you‘re up to. Highlight cool venues.
Put together, these tools help craft fun, vivid stories people absolutely love engaging with according to internal Facebook metrics. Upgrade beyond plain images by remixing these elements in creative ways.
Now that we‘ve covered most key aspects of deleting and enhancing stories, let‘s get into what happens when you decide to remove your Facebook presence entirely.
How Facebook Handles Data After Account Deletion
If you choose to delete your Facebook account, all your stories obviously get eliminated alongside other account content like posts and photos. But what exactly happens to all that data?
When you officially delete the account via the platform‘s deletion tool, Facebook initiates a 1-month deactivation period. During this time, your profile and content stays locked out of view but still resides in Facebook‘s storage systems.
If you log back in within that month, your account automatically gets reactivated with all data intact.
However, if the 1-month deletion period expires, Facebook automatically purges all associated personal data from storage. This eliminates stories, posts, photos and any other info tied to that account.
According to Facebook, permanent deletion happens within 90 days absolute maximum of the account getting removed. So you can expect data erasure anywhere between 30 to 90 days post-account deletion.
Once purged after those time periods, recovering any deleted Facebook data proves impossible. So if you have old stories you want to reminisce later in life or important life events documented on the platform, make sure to properly archive that content beforehand.
And that sums up this comprehensive guide on precisely controlling your story presence all the way from temporarily removing stories up to permanently eliminating your Facebook presence.
Let‘s do a quick recap of what we learned:
