Instagram creators can decide who can respond to the stories they create. As your account grows, itโs likely youโll start receiving DMs youโd rather not have. Hereโs how you can decide who can reply to your story.

Just because you choose to have a public account, doesnโt mean you have to receive messages privately. Itโs still completely your choice whether you allow messages at all. Typically, by default anyone who is able to see your story can reply. If your account is private, those who follow you will be able to view your story and then respond directly to you. Alternatively, if your account is public, then anyone can reply to your stories. That is, unless youโve blocked somebody.
But it comes back to, if they can view it, they can reply to it. You can create close friends groups which allow you to post stories that can only be viewed by those within this. Meaning you can pick and choose who is able to view your stories. Perhaps you want one story to be public, but another to only be seen by your closest followers. Thatโs completely your choice. When you prevent certain people from replying to your story โ theyโll no longer see the option to. So, they will still be able to view it, but they canโt respond.
If you want to prevent anyone from replying to your stories, hereโs how
- Tap
or your profile picture in the bottom right to go to your profile.
- Tap
in the top right, then tap
Settings.
- Click Privacy, then tap Story.
- Select an option below Allow message replies.
Information sourced from Instagram
Your stories are only there for 24 hours. So whether you allow people to reply to them or not, they wonโt be able to view them after this period of time. If you decide to let people respond, once your story has ended, you wonโt be able to see your story in their response. So, you can still view what they had to say, but if you have more than one story, you wonโt know which one theyโre talking about after itโs disappeared. This is unless you add your stories into your highlights on Instagram.