How to hide your followers and following list on Instagram

Lots of people search for a way to hide who follows them, or who they follow. Here is what Instagram actually lets you do, based on its own Help Center, and what it does not.

The short answer

Instagram’s Help Center describes no setting that hides your followers list or your following list. What you can do is make your account private, remove followers, block people and remove flagged spam accounts. Each of those changes who sees what, but none of them hides the list completely. Instagram changes its features often, so check your own app too.

What a private account does and does not hide

Instagram’s Help Center has a table that compares public and private accounts. These are the parts that matter here:

	Public account	Private account
Who can follow you?	Anyone on Instagram	Only people you approve
Who can see public accounts you follow and that follow you?	Anyone on Instagram and Threads	Anyone on Instagram and Threads
Who can see private accounts you follow and that follow you?	Anyone on Instagram	Your followers
Who can see your photos and videos on your profile or in feed?	Anyone on Instagram	Your followers
Who can see your profile photo, name, username and bio?	Anyone on or off Instagram	Anyone on or off Instagram

So going private is a big step for your photos and videos, but it does not hide the public accounts you follow, or the public accounts that follow you. Those stay visible to anyone on Instagram and Threads.

How to make your account private

These steps are the same on iPhone and Android, according to Instagram’s Help Center:

1. Tap your profile picture in the bottom right to open your profile.
2. Tap Menu in the top right.
3. Below Who can see your content, tap Account privacy.
4. Turn on Private account and tap Switch to private to confirm.

Three things to know:

• Business profiles cannot be private. Instagram says that to make a business account private, you first switch back to a personal account.
• If you are under 18, your account is private by default.
• Do not switch back and forth too often. Instagram says a temporary limit, including on approving follow requests, may be placed on your account if you switch between public and private too often.

Remove a follower

If your account is private, you can take people off your followers list. Instagram’s Help Center describes it like this:

1. Open your profile and tap Followers at the top.
2. Tap the X to the right of the person.
3. Tap Remove to confirm.

The person is not notified that you removed them.

Block someone

Instagram’s Help Center says you can also block someone to get them to stop following you, and that people are not notified when you block them.

Remove spam and bot followers

If your account is public, Instagram may flag followers as possible spam, bots or irrelevant. Instagram’s Help Center says you can remove them: open your profile, tap Followers, and if there are flagged accounts, tap the Flagged for review notice and then Remove all, or remove them one by one. They are removed from your follower count and list, and they are not notified. Instagram notes this feature may not be available to you yet.

How to hide who you follow

Instagram’s help pages describe no setting that hides your following list. Anyone on Instagram can see the public accounts you follow, so if you do not want an account in your list, the way to take it out is to unfollow it.

If you run a business or creator account

A business profile cannot be private, so your followers and the accounts you follow stay visible to anyone on Instagram. What you control is what visitors see first. Instagram says your profile photo, name, username and bio are visible to anyone on or off Instagram, so make them count.

• Write a clear bio that says what you do.
• Add a link that takes people to one page with your best links, a contact form and your offers. The steps are in how to add a link to your Instagram bio.
• You can build that page free on Linkerzz.

A quick checklist

1. Decide what you want to hide. Your photos, your followers or your following list are different things.
2. Go private if you want only approved people to see your photos and videos. Remember this does not hide public connections.
3. Remove or block people you do not want following you. They are not told.
4. Unfollow accounts you do not want in your following list.
5. For a business account, focus on your bio and link, since the account cannot be private.

Wondering what other people can see about you? Read can you see who views your Instagram profile and does Instagram notify when you screenshot.