There may be times when you don’t want a post to be published automatically. For example, you may want to add stickers to a story or music to a reel. In these cases, it’s best to schedule your post as a reminder so you’ll be notified when it’s time to post and you can finish publishing manually.
Additionally, there may be technical reasons why your post can’t automatically publish (such as your media falling outside of Instagram’s accepted aspect ratio range), and we want to make sure you have all of the information you need to get through the posting process seamlessly.
This article contains the following sections:
- How to identify reminders in the queue or calendar
- Publishing post reminders
- Finding your past reminders
- Adjusting posting default to “reminders only”
- Resetting post reminder notifications
- Who receives the reminder when it’s time to post
How to identify reminders in the queue or calendar
Posts scheduled as reminders will display a bell icon in the queue and calendar:
Publishing post reminders
- When it's time for your post to be published, you'll receive a push notification to your phone. Tapping the alert will bring you to a preview of your Instagram post within the Buffer mobile app.
- From there, tap Open in Instagram.
📝 If you missed the push notification, you can always re-trigger it by heading to the Past Reminders tab.
- If you're managing multiple Instagram accounts, make sure you are switched to the correct account before you publish your post.
- You can then choose whether to post to your Feed or Story.
- Once inside Instagram, crop your image, use filters, enhance your video with music, add stickers, and publish your post just as you would if you were sharing your post or story natively.
- For posts that contain multiple images, tap into your photo library to find all of your scheduled images.
- To insert your caption, tap in the caption area on iOS or tap the Aa option on Android to paste it in from your phone’s clipboard.
📝 Pre-scheduled locations will not be included on posts sent through as reminders, so you may wish to add the location back in before sharing the post.
Finding your post reminders
In the Past Reminders tab, you'll find all Instagram posts that were scheduled as reminders (i.e. not published automatically) whether they were published or not. For posts you have yet to publish, you can re-trigger push notifications from here.
- Tap the three horizontal lines at the top left of your screen and tap on your Instagram account. Then, tap the Past Reminders tab where you can toggle between Posts and Stories.
- To share a post or story to Instagram now, tap Post to Instagram at the bottom of the post and tap Share Now. This replicates what would happen if the reminder were to come through now, and allows you to share the post or story to Instagram.
- To add a post back to your queue, tap the three dots at the top right of the post and then tap Copy to queue. This option is only available for posts, not for stories and will add the post to the next available posting slot. You can then head back to the queue to adjust the posting time and date if you like.
On Android, it's possible to reschedule a story by tapping the three dots at the top right of the post and then tapping Reschedule. This option is not currently available on iOS.
To find your reminders on web, select your Instagram channel, then tap the "Past Reminders" tab.
Adjusting posting default to “reminders only”
If you would prefer for all posts to be scheduled and sent as reminders, you can do that in the settings area of the mobile app.
- Tap the menu bar in the top left of your screen.
- Select your Instagram channel.
- Tap Settings in the bottom right of your screen.
- Under the "Instagram" area, toggle "Disable Direct Scheduling" ON.
To find this setting on web, select your Instagram channel, then choose Settings > General and make sure "Set Instagram reminders for all posts" is turned ON.
Resetting post reminder notifications
If reminder notifications are not coming through to your phone, please follow the steps below.
- Open the Buffer app on your mobile device and tap the round avatar icon at the top left of your screen.
- Scroll to the bottom of the list of your channels and tap Signout.
- Log back into the Buffer app.
- Tap the Settings icon at the bottom right of your screen.
- Tap the Account Settings tab.
- Tap Push Notifications.
- Tap Reset Push Notifications or RESET.
Who receives the reminder when it’s time to post?
When it's time for one of your Instagram posts to be published (assuming it wasn't published automatically), we'll send a push notification to whichever mobile devices have been connected to your Buffer account. This includes both the account owner and any users who have been invited to the Instagram account with Full Posting Access. Learn more about user permissions here.