Instagram best nine 2017: How to make your photo year in review

The process requires a little more work if you have a private profile

Aatif Sulleyman

Friday 29 December 2017 15:29

✕

Instagram best nine 2017: How to make your photo year in review

Instagram users are posting their “#bestnine2017” collages to the site, to celebrate the year coming to an end.

They group together the nine most popular pictures you’ve posted to the social media site this year, arranging them in a three-by-three grid.

But the Best Nine creator isn’t a native tool. In order to make your own collage, you need to use a separate service.

✕

Obama's offical photographer on 'throwing shade' at Trump on his Instagram

2017bestnine.com is a dedicated site for creating the collages.

All you need to do to make yours is type your Instagram username into the Instagram ID box on the site and hit Get – you don't even need to login.

2017bestnine will automatically find the nine most-Liked pictures you’ve posted this year, and also show you the total number of photos you’ve posted this year, and how many Likes they've all generated.

However, it only works for public profiles.

11 useful Instagram features you didn't know existed

Show all 11

1/1111 useful Instagram features you didn't know existed

Filters are a core part of Instagram, but there are so many available it can be easy to get lost. You can change the order in which they appear, and even hide the ones you never use, to speed up your photo-sharing process. On the filters page, scroll to the end, tap Manage, then drag and drop the ones you want to reorder, and un-check the ones you want to hide.

Instagram controversially ditched its reverse-chronological order feed for a new order determined by an algorithm, making it easy to completely miss some posts. To make sure you never miss a certain somebody’s updates, you can set up notification for them by visiting their profile, tapping the three dots in the top right-hand corner and selecting Turn On Post Notifications.

If you’re worried about how much of your mobile data Instagram saps, you can limit it by sacrificing the speed at which the photos and videos in your feed load. Go to your profile, tap the three dots in the top right corner, open Cellular Data Use and choose Use Less Data.

It’s easy to lose track of your friends’ old posts on Instagram, but if you know you Liked it, you’ll be able to track it down easily. Just go to your profile, hit the three dots at the top and select Posts You’ve Liked. You can also save posts in a folder only you can see by tapping the bookmark icon underneath it. Take a look at everything you’ve bookmarked by tapping the same icon that sits near the top of your profile.

Everyone knows you can expand the reach of your posts by using a number of relevant hashtags, but what those are aren’t always glaringly obvious. You can easily find the right ones for you by typing a keyword into Instagram’s search bar, selecting a hashtag from the list and swiping along the Related row that appears at the top of the screen.

Whatever your reasons are, you can clear your recent searches by going to your profile, hitting the three dots in the top right and selecting Clear Search History. To go a step further and hide your Suggested searches too, go to the search page, tap and hold the account you want to hide, and choose Hide from the pop-up window.

Tagged photos on Instagram aren’t as prominent as they are on Facebook, but anyone can still browse through other people’s pictures of you by visiting your profile and tapping the photo of you icon. If you’re tagged in a picture you don’t want other people to see, go to your profile, hit the photos of you icon, tap the three dots at the top of the screen and choose Hide Photos.

Make your Instagram account much harder to hack by enabling two-factor authentication, a security feature that protects you even if your login details are stolen. Go to your profile, tap the three dots, open Two-Factor Authentication and toggle it on.

If you want to upload a bunch of related pictures and videos without flooding everyone else’s feed, you can shared them all as one post. Hit the + icon, select Gallery, choose Select Multiple, pick out up to 10 of the pictures and clips you want, tap Next and reorder them by dragging and dropping.

Instagram Stories has been a massive hit since it came out last year, but you might not know that you can record Stories clips without having to hold one of your digits on the record key. On the Stores screen, just swipe through the options at the bottom until you get to Hands-Free.

Most people know you can delete any of the images you’ve already posted, but not everyone is aware that you can also edit them. Instagram unfortunately doesn’t let you tinker with filters and effects, but you can change your original caption, tag people and update the location.

If yours is set to private but you still want a Best Nine collage, you can temporarily switch to a public profile, create your image, and then switch back to private mode.

If you’re uncomfortable with allowing a third-party service to scan your feed, you can instead create your own Best Nine image.

You can do this by going through your Instagram pictures yourself and using Instagram’s own Layout app to arrange them in a grid.

By using this method, you also have the advantage of being able to cheat a little, by swapping out a couple of your "best" pictures for slightly less popular ones that you simply prefer.

Somewhat creepily, you can also use the site to create Best Nine collages for other users – as long as their profile is public.

Join our new commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies