How to Create Instagram Highlight Covers

This tutorial on how to create Instagram story highlight covers will help you DIY your own covers and have you feeling like a pro using two simple options.

Have you seen those big Instagram accounts that have the really pretty covers for their Instagram story highlights? They’re all fairly simple, but they give a very cohesive look to their Instagram profile page.

Guess what? Those are super simple to create yourself. You can do it with your computer or just an app on your phone. Today I’m going to show you two different ways to create these covers.

On the computer

First, we’re going to talk real quick about on your computer. If you want to use your computer I would recommend using Canva. It’s free. And easy-to-use. You’re going to want to create a template that is a custom size. The size you want to use is 1080 px by 1920 px. This is the size that will work the great in your Instagram stories.

Canva has tons of different backgrounds, fonts, and design elements to make some really cute covers. You can use shapes, or icons, colors, or even just have black and white with text. Whatever you choose. There are a lot of free options but a lot are paid as well. I think if I change mine to icons at some point I will use The Noun Project or Icon Finder to get a bunch of cohesive icons for less than paying $1 individually.

Once you have them all done save them and then upload them to somewhere you can get to them on your device. I like to use Google Drive for that. I have a folder in my Google Drive that I just put all my Instagram stuff that I have made on my computer. Now that they are saved scroll down to Adding to Instagram to see how to get them in your highlights.

Using an app

I made my current covers with an app called Word Swag. It was super easy. You want to open the app and choose an image either from your phone or from their gallery. You can search for more images by typing in the search bar at the top. Once you have chosen your background image crop it to 9 x 16. This is perfect for your Instagram stories.

Then you’re going to click next and it will show you your cropped image with a sample text. Double click the text to change it. Then you can select any of the fonts and variations from the bottom bar. I chose Lumber Jack. When choosing a font a click it and then click a couple variations to see if there’s something I like.

The trick to doing these in Word Swag is that some of the fonts, like Lumber Jack, change each time you change the text. So sometimes I had to roll the little dice in the corner a few time to get the same font and design so that all of my covers are cohesive.

Even with having to roll a couple times it was a very quick process to make up a whole bunch of these. I just sat down for 15-20 minutes and made all the ones that I thought I might use in the future. That way they are all ready to go.

Note: Don’t worry if you don’t keep your text centered. I redid a few when I looked in my photos and saw that my text was slowly sliding down the image. I guess I tent to move the text when I double click it to edit. But you can move your cover image around to center you text in the highlight cover circle, so it’s not super important that they are all centered. Unless you can tell on your background that it’s not. Then that might be an issue.

Once you have all of your covers that you need saved to your device you can start adding them to Instagram

Adding to Instagram

Open up Instagram and you’re going to want to put them in your stories. You do that by creating a new story and adding the cover image to it. Share it to your stories. Know that these are going into your story feed. So, personally, I find that the first couple stories I post get watched the most and they have progressivly less views as I post more. So it might be a good idea to post these after you have posted a couple stories. That way they aren’t the top of your story feed. It probably doesn’t make a big difference, that’s just a personal preference of mine.

Now go to your profile and you can click on one of your highlights that you want to change the cover to. Down in the right-hand corner you’re going to click the three little dots and choose edit highlight.

Then you’re going to click on the archive tab and add your story cover to your highlight. Then you can click the highlighted tab again so you can tap “edit cover”. Your highlight cover should be an option to choose from now that it has been added to the highlight.

Simply save the highlight by clicking “done” and you’re finished.

Don’t they look so great? This is something you could easily do in the carpool line or in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. It’s a quick and easy task that will spruce up your profile quite a bit and make it look much more professional.

For more tips and tricks check out my other posts on How to Be an Awesome Influencer.

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