How to delete, archive or recover a social media post

The short answer

Instagram and TikTok give you 30 days to change your mind: a deleted post goes to Recently deleted, and you can restore it there with its comments and likes. YouTube, X and LinkedIn delete for good. YouTube Help says a deleted video is permanently deleted, and X’s Help Center says a deleted post disappears from your profile, followers’ timelines and search.

If you only want a post out of sight, hiding is usually better than deleting. Instagram’s archive hides a post from your profile and keeps its likes and comments, and you can undo it at any time. On TikTok, setting a post to Only you does the same job.

Delete, hide or restore, platform by platform

From each platform’s help pages, read in November 2026:

Instagram: archive, delete and Recently deleted

Instagram’s Help Center says archiving a post hides it from your profile so followers and others cannot see it, keeps all its likes and comments, and can be undone at any time. To delete instead, tap Options above the post, then Delete; to delete several at once, go to Your activity, then Posts, select them and tap Delete.

A deleted photo, video, reel or story moves to Recently deleted and is removed for good 30 days later, or after up to 24 hours for stories not in your stories archive. To get one back, go to Your activity, then Recently deleted under Removed and archived content, pick it and tap Restore. Instagram notes that deleted messages cannot be restored.

TikTok: Recently deleted and Only you

TikTok’s Help Center says a deleted post remains in its system for up to 30 days before it is permanently deleted. Within that time you can restore it from Settings and privacy, Activity center, Recently deleted, and its comments and likes come back with it. One exception: if you made a Duet or Stitch and the original creator deleted their video along with its Duets and Stitches, yours cannot be recovered.

To hide a post without deleting it, TikTok’s Help Center on video visibility says you can open the post, tap More options, then Privacy settings, and choose Only you. Its view count does not reset if you change it back.

YouTube, X and LinkedIn: deleting is final

YouTube Help says that when you delete a video it is permanently deleted, so keep a backup if you may want it again. Data such as watch time stays in your aggregate reports but is no longer attributed to that video. You cannot replace a video in place, since every new upload gets a new URL, but you can trim the existing one or change its details instead.

X’s Help Center says deleting a post removes it from your account, your followers’ timelines and X search, removes reposts of it too, and makes its contents and analytics no longer publicly available on X. X offers no bulk delete; posts go one by one. LinkedIn Help says you cannot delete content marked as spam, and that a deleted post could still appear in a digest email already sent to your connections.

Before you delete

Deleting takes the post’s numbers with it, which changes what your account’s averages say. If the post is wrong but harmless, an edit or a correction may serve better; if it is outdated, hiding keeps the history. Save a copy of the file and the caption first, and screenshot the numbers if you report on them.

What PostEase does

Delete a published post in the platform’s own app; PostEase does not remove posts from platforms. When a post is deleted on Instagram, PostEase checks at its regular read, every 6 hours, confirms with Instagram that the post no longer exists, and then removes it from Performance so your usual is not skewed by a post nobody can see. Posts deleted on other platforms stay in PostEase’s history. YouTube, X, LinkedIn (personal profile), Pinterest, Bluesky, WordPress, and TikTok publishing are live today; Instagram, Facebook, and Threads are pending each platform's own API approval.

Questions

Sources

1. Instagram, Delete posts you’ve shared on Instagram, checked November 2026.
2. Instagram, Archive a post you’ve shared on Instagram, checked November 2026.
3. Instagram, How to recover deleted Instagram photos, videos, reels, and stories, checked November 2026.
4. TikTok, Editing, posting, and deleting, checked November 2026.
5. TikTok, Video visibility: choose who can view your posts, checked November 2026.
6. YouTube, Replace or delete your video, checked November 2026.
7. X, How to delete a post, checked November 2026.
8. LinkedIn, Delete content you’ve shared, checked November 2026.