Create and schedule new Instagram posts:
- In the sidebar, click Social Media → Publishing Wizard (or Create post on Social Media → Posts).
- In step 1, select Instagram — and any other platform the same post should go to.
- In step 2, select media from the Media Library.
- In step 3, add the caption and hashtags. In step 4, open the Instagram tab to choose the account and the format (Feed post, Reel or Story).
- In step 5, leave the date empty and click Save and Publish, or pick a date, time and time zone and click Save and Schedule Publish.
Publishing runs in the background: the post shows a spinner in Posts until it is live, and you get a notification either way.
If you are an Editor (you can write posts but not publish them), step 5 shows Submit for review instead of Save and Publish. A reviewer approves the post before it goes out. See 12.7.
Save as a draft and finish later. From step 2 onwards, every step has a Save as Draft button next to Continue (or press Ctrl+S). The whole post is kept: platforms, media and their order, captions, the settings on each platform’s tab, and the planned date. You stay in the wizard, and the progress card on the right shows Draft saved, or Unsaved changes once you change something. Press Save as Draft again to update the same draft.
Continue a draft: open the Publishing Wizard. Step 1 lists Saved drafts, newest first: your own, and any a teammate shared with you. Each row shows the first picture or video, the caption, the platforms and post types, the planned date (if any), who can see it, and who saved it last and when. Click a row or Continue to reopen it on the step where it was saved. With more than four drafts, use the search box or Show all. When you have both kinds, Mine and Shared with me filter the list.
Drafts are private. A new draft is visible only to you and to your company admins. To work on it with others, click Share (the person icon on the draft’s row, or Share under the progress steps while the draft is open) and choose:
- Only me: nobody else can see it.
- Everyone on my team: anyone in your company who can use the Publishing Wizard.
- Specific teammates: tick the people who should see it.
People you share a draft with can open it, change it, save it and publish it. Their row shows Shared by and your name. Only you can change who sees it. You or a company admin can delete it (the bin icon).
Company admins see every draft in the company, including private ones, marked not shared with you. An admin can open, finish, publish or delete them (for example, to tidy up after someone leaves), but cannot change who they are shared with. For admins, the filter reads Mine / Teammates’.
Publishing removes the draft from everyone’s list, so it cannot be published twice. Until then, nothing in a draft is posted anywhere.
If a platform in the draft has been disconnected since it was saved, the draft opens without it and a yellow note says so. Reconnect it, then select it again in step 1.
If you open another draft while you have unsaved changes, the wizard asks whether to save them first.
Captions for a carousel. When you pick more than one image or video for an Instagram feed post, step 3 (Caption) shows a Carousel captions card. Choose Same for all slides to use the one caption you wrote, or A caption for each slide to write a separate caption under every slide’s thumbnail. Instagram only shows one caption for a whole carousel, so slide captions are published as a numbered list (1/3 — …) underneath your main caption, which then works as the opening. Slides you leave empty are skipped. A live preview shows the exact caption and its length; a post can hold 2,048 characters including hashtags. Drag a slide to a new position in step 2 and its caption moves with it.
Also share to the story. In step 4, each Instagram and Facebook tab has an Also share to the story switch (hidden for Stories, which already are one). When the post is live, its first image or video is also put on that account’s story, and you get a notification. Neither platform lets an app reshare a post to a story, so what goes up is the media itself. The same action is on the post page: open the post and use the Story card to Share to story (or Share again after the 24 hours are over). Story shares count towards your plan’s daily story limit.
Video cover. When the post is a single video, step 2 shows a Video cover card under your media. Choose A frame from the video and drag the slider to the moment you want, or An image and pick (or upload) a picture from the Media Library. A video made with Create with AI also offers Use the AI preview picture, the still it was animated from. Let the platform choose leaves it to Instagram or Facebook. The cover follows the video when you reorder media, and the card, the phone preview and Posts all show it.
- Instagram shows the cover on the Reels tab and keeps the middle 9:16 of it, so a tall picture works best. Instagram can’t change a cover once the Reel is published, so choose it before you publish.
- Facebook can change the cover later: see 13.1.
- Stories and carousels don’t have a cover, so the card is hidden for them. Pinterest doesn’t take a custom cover.
- Shape: a Reel’s cover is tall (9:16); a Facebook feed video’s cover has the same shape as the video. The preview frame on the card has that shape. If your picture has a different shape, a yellow note says so and only its middle part is used: Peikly crops it that way for you, and the original stays untouched in your Media Library. A note also warns when the picture is too small to look sharp (use at least 1080 px wide).
- Any picture works: a PNG, a very large image or a picture of the wrong shape is turned into a fitting JPEG copy in your Media Library automatically. The same copy is reused when the post goes to several platforms or is saved again.
