how to add camera roll photos to instagram story

Instagram STories teaser 001

We've already learned how to upload pictures from your library to your Instagram Story, but as you may know, there is one big limitation when doing this: you can only upload photos or videos that have been shot in the last 24 hours. Anything older than 24 hours will not be eligible for upload to your Story.

Thankfully, there are several ways to get around this limitation, and we'll show you exactly how.

Uploading old photos to Instagram Story

Option 1: Screenshot that photo

take screenshot on iPhone

The first option, and probably the most obvious and easy one is to simply take a screenshot of an old photo by pressing the Home and Sleep button at the same time. Doing so will add the screenshot to your Camera Roll, and because that screenshot is brand new, you will be able to upload it to your Instagram Story.

The main downside here is that the quality of the photo will be slightly decreased, and that you may have to crop the picture prior to uploading it in order to remove excess black background.

Other than that, this method is pretty straightforward.

Option 2: Manually edit the photo meta data

MetaTrixter change meta data

We're getting into a more complex workaround here, but this is still one of the best ways to get an old photo to your Instagram Story. To do so, we will simply edit the meta data of a photo to change the date it was taken.

There is currently no way to do that on an iPhone without downloading a third-party app, and spending a few minutes in the App Store, I have found a great one, which happens to be entirely free, has no ads and doesn't require an in-app purchase.

Go to the App Store and download MetaTrixter. With this app, you can simply choose an old photo, and start editing the date it was taken, then save that photo.

Note that this method will modify the photo you're editing instead of creating a copy of it.

Option 3: Automatically edit the timestamp of the photo

upload old photo to instagram story

Similar to the previous option, there is an app in the App Store that allows you to clone an old photo and automatically edit its meta data at the press of a button, without requiring you to tweak date settings. The app is called Storied For Instagram, and it is a $0.99 download in the App Store.

Simply launch the app, select an older photo (or a video), and that's it. An exact copy of the photo or video will be added to your Camera Roll for you to upload to your Instagram Story.

This is clearly the best method here, but it does come at a cost. Now is this cost worth it to you? Only you can make this decision. If it's not, then you might want to default back to option 2, or the more hacky workaround showed in option 1.

Are there other ways to upload an old photo or video to Instagram Story you can think of? If so, please share it in the comments section below.