Suddenly realized a mistake in the text of a Facebook Story, or realized you never should have posted that dumb photo in the first place? Maybe you simply uploaded a Story accidentally, before you were finished editing it.
Whatever your reasoning, here we’ve compiled all the tutorials you’ll need – whether using the mobile app or web browser – to permanently delete unwanted content from your Facebook Stories.
For additional queries and information, see our FAQs at the bottom of this article.
Table of Contents
How to delete a story on the Facebook desktop website
- Open up your preferred web browser and navigate to the Facebook website. If prompted, sign in.
- Now, navigate to the ‘Stories’ section of your News Feed (right at the top), and click on your own Story – the one with the content you wish to delete
- Now, click through your story until you locate the specific video or picture you wish to delete (if you want to delete the whole story, there’s no single good way to do this – you’re just going to have to repeat this process for each and every element of the Story)
- Next, click on the three dots in the upper-right corner of the picture or video
- From the drop-down menu, select ‘Delete photo’ or ‘Delete video’ (whichever is appropriate), if asked to confirm the deletion, do so
- Repeat as much as necessary to delete as much of the Story as you need to
How to delete a story from your archive on the Facebook desktop website
- Open up your preferred web browser and navigate to the Facebook website. If prompted, sign in.
- Now, navigate to the ‘Stories’ section of your News Feed (right at the top), and click on your own Story – the one with the content you wish to delete
- Click on ‘Archive’ (in blue, at the top of the left-hand sidebar, next to ‘Your Story’)
- Navigate through your archive of Stories until you locate the Story or Stories you wish to delete
- Open it/them up, and click on the three dots in the upper-right
- From the drop-down menu, select ‘Delete photo’ or ‘Delete video’ (whichever is appropriate), if asked to confirm the deletion, do so
How to delete a story on the Facebook mobile app
- Open up the Facebook app on your mobile or tablet device, and if prompted, sign in
- Now, navigate to the ‘Stories’ section of your News Feed (right at the top), and tap on your own Story – the one with the content you wish to delete
- Now, tap through your story until you locate the specific video or picture you wish to delete (if you want to delete the whole story, there’s no single good way to do this – you’re just going to have to repeat this process for each and every element of the Story)
- Next, tap the three dots in the upper-right corner of the picture or video
- From the drop-down menu, select ‘Delete photo’ or ‘Delete video’ (whichever is appropriate), if asked to confirm the deletion, do so
- Repeat as much as necessary to delete as much of the Story as you need to
How to delete a story from your archive on the Facebook mobile app
- Open up the Facebook app on your mobile or tablet device, and if prompted sign in
- Now, navigate to the ‘Stories’ section of your News Feed (right at the top), and tap on ‘Show All Stories’
- Next, tap on the ‘Archive’ icon in the top left (looks like a clock with a backwards-cycling arrow)
- Navigate through your archive of Stories until you locate the Story or Stories you wish to delete
- Open it/them up, and tap on the three dots in the upper-right
- From the drop-down menu, select ‘Delete photo’ or ‘Delete video’ (whichever is appropriate), if asked to confirm the deletion, do so
And there you have it! Whether deleting a new Story still less than 24 hours old, or one from your archives, and whether doing so on your mobile, tablet, or PC, by just following our tutorials above you can master the art in next to no time.
For any additional information or unanswered queries, see our FAQs below.
Frequently asked questions
What is Facebook?
Founded over a decade ago, Facebook is one of the world’s largest (if not the largest) social networking applications. On Facebook you can connect with friends, family, colleagues, or people from all across the world, especially handy if you want to talk with other fans of your favorite book, TV show, or sport, for example.
Facebook is a meeting place and a place to plan events, a place for organizations to hold meetings, for you to upload your photos and memories too, a place to keep in touch with old friends and new ones, and generally just a pretty versatile social network.
As a company, Facebook also owns several other major social networking apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
What is a Facebook Story?
Just like an Instagram Story (and of course, Facebook owns Instagram), Facebook Stories are a secondary news feed on the Facebook app. They allow users to upload photo and video collections, which are heavily customizable and can be viewed by all of their Facebook friends and followers, separate from the usual news feed.
Stories, however, unlike their standard feed post cousins, are Snapchat-like quick update features, meaning that they only stick around for 24 hours, after which they are automatically moved to the Facebook Stories Archive unless you have turned off this feature in your profile’s settings.
Why would I want to delete a Facebook Story?
There are lots of good reasons why you might want to delete a Facebook Story – most common of all is the likelihood that you accidentally uploaded a story before you were finished editing/customizing it; but then of course you might just have realized later that you never wanted to upload that story in the first place; that you’re embarrassed by it; or that it is maybe even inappropriate, in light of new news, say.
Whatever your reason, knowing how to do so might not seem obvious at first, hence why we’ve created this tutorial for you, to help you learn how.
What happens when I delete a Facebook Story?
When you delete content from your Facebook Story, it is permanently deleted from your Profile. However, if the content is from an old Story, which will now have been moved to your Archive, then you’ll have to navigate there in order to permanently delete the content. To do so, just follow our tutorials above.
