Reposting is not sharing to your story
These are two different features, and they get mixed up constantly. That is where the instructions that do not work come from: a person looks for one thing and is shown another.
Sharing a post to your story has been around for years. Someone else’s post travels into your story with a tag on the author, lives for 24 hours and disappears. Nothing stays on your profile afterwards.
A repost works differently. The post goes not into a story but into a separate tab on your profile, and it stays there. Meta described the feature in its announcement: public reels and feed posts can be reposted, the repost reaches friends’ and followers’ feeds, and credit stays with the original poster.
| What we compare | To a story | Repost |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lands | in your story | in feeds and a profile tab |
| How long it lives | 24 hours | until you delete it |
| Trace on the profile | none | yes, its own tab |
| Who sees it | your story viewers | followers and friends |
| What the author gets | a tag | a tag and reach |
How to repost
A post or a reel
- Open a public post or reel.
- Tap the repost icon under it.
- If you want, type a thought into the bubble that appears and save it.
The note is optional; the repost goes out without it. Instagram’s help calls that field a “thought bubble” that appears on screen. It is not a caption and not a comment, but a separate element shown alongside the post.
Private accounts cannot be reposted this way. The feature works only with public content, and that is the platform’s own limit — nothing gets around it.
If there is no repost icon
- The post is private. Posts from private profiles never carry the icon.
- The app is old. Update it in the store and restart it.
- The feature has not reached you. Instagram rolls new things out in waves, and that takes weeks.
- Wrong kind of content. The announcement names reels and feed posts. Stories and live video are not mentioned.
The advice you will meet most often — reinstall the app — does nothing. Whether the feature exists for you is decided on the platform’s side, not by your installation: remove the app, put it back, and you get exactly the same interface. In the third case only waiting helps.
Where a repost lands and how to find one
A repost lives in two places at once. First, in the feeds of your followers and friends, where it appears credited to the original author rather than to you.
Second, in a separate tab on your profile. Meta writes plainly that the tab exists so you can go back and revisit your reposts. Visitors to your page find them there too: on a public account the tab is open to anyone.
To see a particular person’s reposts, open their profile and switch to that tab — provided the account is public. On a private profile the tab is visible only to approved followers, like everything else there.
That has a consequence people miss. A repost is a public act, not a private bookmark. To keep something for yourself there is Saved, which nobody else sees. A repost tells all of your followers that you shared it.
Is there a repost count
The question comes up often and the answer is inconvenient: there is no public repost counter under a post. Likes are visible, comments are visible, the number of reposts is not.
Large accounts see part of the aggregate distribution figures in the professional dashboard. That is statistics in totals, without names and without a breakdown by individual actions.
For an ordinary public account only the indirect path remains: you can look at the reposts of the people whose profiles you open by hand. How many there are in total, the platform does not say.
What happens to your post when someone reposts it
From the author’s side the picture is different, and mostly pleasant. Credit stays with you: Meta puts it in one line — reposts are credited to the original poster. Your name travels with the post wherever it goes.
Then comes the reach. A reposted piece may be recommended to that person’s followers even if those people do not follow you. For an author that is free audience, and the feature was largely built for it.
There is a flip side. The post travels into contexts you did not choose: someone else’s tab, someone else’s note in the bubble, someone else’s audience. You cannot recall it from there.
Who reposted your post
Here comes the unwelcome part. Instagram does not show a list of the people who reposted your post.
Neither the platform’s help nor Meta’s announcement offers it. They describe where a repost lands and who gets the credit, but say nothing about the author seeing who shared. No counter, no notification, no line in the statistics.
- The author tag. A repost is signed with the original source, so you will sometimes run into one by accident — in your feed or on a profile you know.
- Someone else’s repost tab. If you suspect a particular person, open their profile. On public accounts the tab is open to everyone, and this is the only targeted method.
- Reach growing without follows. An indirect and weak signal: the same numbers rise from ordinary recommendations.
None of the three gives a complete list. The first is accidental, the second needs the name in advance, the third cannot separate a repost from any other traffic source.
It helps to see why. The question is not an interface oversight but a platform decision: showing such a list means telling one person what another one did. Instagram avoids that consistently. For the same reason nobody learns who saved a post, who forwarded it in messages, or who opened a profile.
Here is an opinion you are free to disagree with: if what you care about is who exactly interacts with your account, reposts are useless for it and follower lists are the place to look. One objection stands — if you run a shop or a publication and reach matters more than the individual, the reverse is true, because reposts bring viewers that lists never will.
How to delete your repost
Your own reposts are removed like ordinary posts: open the repost, tap the three dots above it and choose delete. It leaves the tab and stops appearing to followers.
There is no separate undo button — only deletion, and it behaves the same a minute after posting and a month later. The original author is not told about the deletion, just as they were not told about the repost.
Someone else’s repost is harder. You cannot delete it: it is their post on their profile. The only lever available is making your own account private, because a private profile has nothing to repost. Blunt, but it works.
No way to hide the repost tab itself on a public profile is described in the help.
What cannot be found out about reposts
Anything a third-party service promises beyond that list is guesswork, not data.
Common questions
How do I repost on Instagram?
Open a public post or reel, tap the repost icon underneath it, and optionally add a note in the bubble that appears. The repost goes to your followers’ feeds and into the repost tab on your profile.
Can I find out who reposted my post?
There is no full list. Instagram does not expose it: no counter, no notification, no entry in the statistics. You can only check one person at a time by opening their profile and looking at their repost tab, and only if that account is public.
Why do I not have a repost button?
Most often the feature simply has not reached your account yet — the platform rolls things out in waves. Check also that the post is not from a private profile and that your app is up to date. Reinstalling the app does not help.
Does the author get a notification when their post is reposted?
No separate notification is sent. The author may find out by accident, seeing the post in a feed or on someone’s profile.
How is a repost different from sharing a post to a story?
A story share lives for 24 hours and leaves no trace on the profile. A repost stays in the profile tab until you delete it and reaches followers’ feeds.
Can I delete someone else’s repost of my post?
No. It is their post on their profile and you have no control over it. The only lever available is making your account private, since a private profile has nothing to repost.