How to Change Comment Settings on TikTok

Taming your TikTok comment section is one of the most powerful things you can do to shape your online experience. It's the difference between a chaotic free-for-all and a thriving community hub. This guide will walk you through every setting, from global controls to filters and single-video options, so you can take full command of the conversation happening on your content.

Why Your TikTok Comment Settings Matter

Before getting into the step-by-step, let's talk about why this is so important. Your comment section isn't just a random list of replies, it’s a direct reflection of your brand and community. Managing it properly helps you do three things exceptionally well:

• Build a Positive Community: A well-managed comment section becomes a welcoming space where followers can connect with you and each other. By filtering out negativity and spam, you encourage more meaningful and supportive interactions. This is the foundation of building a loyal audience that feels safe and valued.
• Protect Your Brand (and Your Sanity): For businesses and professional creators, brand safety is everything. Unchecked comments can quickly devolve into spam, hate speech, or unwanted promotions, which can damage your reputation. For individuals, a constant stream of negativity can be exhausting. Taking control of your comments is an essential act of self-care and brand management.
• Streamline Your Engagement: When you’re not wading through irrelevant or harmful comments, you can focus your energy on what matters: replying to genuine followers, answering questions, and building relationships. It makes the work of community management more efficient and far more rewarding.

Think of your comment settings as the digital bouncer for your content. You get to decide who comes in, what the rules are, and when it's time to show someone the door. Let’s set those rules up now.

Your Main Hub: Account-Wide Comment Settings

TikTok gives you a central place to set the baseline rules for every video you post moving forward. These are your global settings, and it’s the best place to start. Changing them here will apply the new rules to all future videos (it won't retroactively change old ones).

Here’s how to find them:

1. Open TikTok and tap on your Profile in the bottom-right corner.
2. Tap the three horizontal lines (the hamburger menu) in the top-right corner.
3. Select Settings and privacy from the menu that appears.
4. Tap on Privacy.
5. Scroll down to the "Safety" section and tap on Comments.

You’re now looking at your main comment control panel. From here, you have several powerful options to customize your experience.

Who Can Comment on Your TikToks?

The very first option you’ll see is “Comments.” This setting controls exactly who has permission to leave a comment on your videos. Let's break down what each choice means and when you might use it.

Everyone

This is the default setting for most public accounts. As the name suggests, anyone on TikTok can comment on your videos, whether they follow you or not.

• Best For: Maximum reach and engagement. If you’re a brand or creator focused on rapid growth, keeping comments open to everyone invites the widest possible audience to interact with your content. It signals that you’re open to conversation from all corners of the platform.
• The Downside: This setting also leaves you vulnerable to spam, trolls, and unsolicited feedback from people who have no investment in your community.

Followers

By selecting "Followers," you restrict commenting privileges to only the people who have hit that follow button.

• Best For: Nurturing an existing community. This is a great middle ground. It encourages people to follow you if they want to join the conversation, which can be an excellent growth incentive. It also cuts down on random fly-by negativity, as the people commenting have at least made the small commitment of following you.
• The Downside: You might miss out on valuable commentary or questions from potential new followers who discover you on the For You Page and want to engage immediately.

Followers that you follow back (Friends)

This is the most restrictive setting. Only mutuals - people you follow who also follow you back - can leave comments.

• Best For: Private accounts or creators who want to maintain a very tight-knit, safe community. It’s perfect if you primarily use TikTok to interact with a small group of known friends and acquaintances.
• The Downside: This is not a growth-friendly setting. It creates a high barrier to entry for new fans and can make your content feel inaccessible to a wider audience.

No One

If you prefer to disable comments entirely across your account, you can toggle them off completely for future videos. While it’s not an explicit choice in the list with the others, turning comments off can be done from the individual video management screen (more on that later). Choosing this approach means your posts become a one-way street: you post, they watch, but no one can reply.

• Best For: Announcements, sensitive topics where a comment section could become problematic, or accounts that simply don't have the resources for community management. Some artists or brands use this to let the content speak for itself without debate.
• The Downside: You completely lose a primary channel for feedback, engagement, and community building, which are major components of TikTok’s algorithm and user experience.

Filter Your Comments: Your Automated Guardian

Below the "Who can comment" settings, you’ll find the real power tools for maintaining a healthy comment section: the comment filters. These automated tools work 24/7 to catch problematic comments before you, or anyone else, ever see them.

Filter All Comments

When you toggle this on, every single comment on your videos is hidden by default and held for your approval. You’ll need to manually review and approve each one before it becomes visible to the public.

• When to use it: This offers maximum control but requires a ton of work. It’s a great option for short-term campaigns, highly sensitive content, or for accounts managed on behalf of children to ensure absolute safety. Turn this on if you're expecting a huge volume of comments on a specific viral video and want to get ahead of the chaos.
• The Reality: For most creators, this is unsustainable in the long run. The manual review process can become a full-time job.

Filter Spam and Offensive Comments

This setting uses TikTok's own AI moderation to automatically detect and hide comments that are likely spam (e.g., "GET FREE FOLLOWERS HERE") or contain community-guideline-violating offensive language. This is a must-have for basically everyone. It catches the low-hanging fruit of common rule-breakers without any effort on your part.

Filter Keywords

This is arguably the most powerful and underrated feature in your comment moderation toolkit. Here, you can create a custom list of words and phrases that you want to be automatically hidden. Comments containing any of your specified keywords will be held for your approval.

This is perfect for surgical control over your conversations. Here are some practical examples:

• Creators: You can block words common in spam-bot comments ("collaboration," "promote it on"), block the names of people you don't want discussed, or filter out repetitive, unhelpful critiques. If people keep leaving hateful comments using a certain emoji, you can even add the emoji to your filter list.
• Brands: You can block competitor names, profanity, links to other sites, and any other language that doesn't align with your brand voice. Running a campaign for "Product X"? Filter out negative keywords associated with it to maintain a positive discussion.

To use it, simply toggle it on, tap “Add keywords,” and type the words or phrases you want to filter. You can add as many as you need.

Managing Comments on a Single Video

What if you don’t want to change the rules for your entire account, but just for one specific video? TikTok makes this easy to do both before and after you post.

Before You Post a Video:

On the final screen before you hit "Post," where you write your caption and add hashtags, scroll down and you’ll see some options under your description box.

1. Tap on More options.
2. Here you will see a toggle for Allow comments.

By default, this is turned on. If you want to disable comments for this specific video, simply tap the toggle to turn it off. This setting will override your global account settings for this one post only.

After You've Posted a Video:

Changed your mind about a video that's already live? No problem.

1. Navigate to the video on your profile.
2. Tap the three dots (...) on the right-hand side of the screen.
3. From the bottom menu that appears, swipe left until you see Privacy settings. Tap it.
4. You’ll now see the Allow comments toggle for this specific video. You can turn it on or off at any time.

Beyond Settings: Actively Managing the Conversation

Your settings provide the framework, but great community management is also about being present. Here are three active tasks you can perform within the comment section itself.

Deleting and Reporting Comments

Even with filters, some unwanted comments might slip through. To remove a comment, simply long-press on it. A menu will pop up with several options:

• Delete: This removes the comment permanently.
• Report: If the comment violates TikTok's Community Guidelines (like bullying, harassment, or hate speech), report it. This not only removes it but also signals the problematic user to TikTok's moderation team.

Pinning a Comment

You can also "pin" one comment to the very top of the comment section on any of your videos. This is a fantastic tool for setting the tone.

• To Pin a Comment: Long-press the comment you like and select Pin comment.

Use this to highlight an exceptionally kind, funny, or insightful comment from a follower. Or, you can pin your own comment to add more context to the video or ask a question to drive more engagement.

Final Thoughts

Your TikTok comment section is your turf. By using these settings, you have all the tools you need to curate it into exactly the kind of space you want it to be - whether that's a positive community hangout, a professional forum for your brand, or a quiet space for your content to exist peacefully. Don't be afraid to adjust these controls as your account grows and your needs change.

Staying on top of those comments is a huge part of social media management, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. At Postbase, we built a unified social inbox that pulls in your comments and DMs from TikTok, Instagram, and all your other platforms into a single, manageable stream. Instead of bouncing between apps to reply and moderate, we let you handle it all in one clean place, making your entire community management workflow faster and less overwhelming.