How to Change Privacy Settings on Instagram

Taking control of your Instagram privacy is easier than you think. From deciding who sees your posts to filtering out unwanted comments, the platform gives you a powerful set of tools to create a safer, more positive online space. This guide will walk you through exactly how to find and use every important privacy setting on your Instagram account, step by step.

Start with the Basics: Public vs. Private Account

The single biggest privacy decision you can make on Instagram is whether your account is public or private. By default, new accounts are public, meaning anyone on or off Instagram can see your profile, posts, Stories, and Reels. For brands, creators, and public figures, this is often the desired setting to maximize reach. But for personal use, or if you simply want more control, a private account is the way to go.

What does a Private Account do?

• Only followers you’ve approved can see your content (posts, stories, reels, etc.).
• New followers must send you a request, which you can accept or deny.
• People who don't follow you cannot see your follower or following lists.
• Your content won't appear on the Explore page or hashtag pages for non-followers.
• If someone shares your post via DM, only people who follow you can see it.

How to Switch to a Private Account:

1. Go to your Instagram profile and tap the three horizontal lines (the "hamburger menu") in the top right corner.
2. Tap on Settings and privacy.
3. Scroll down to the "Who can see your content" section and tap Account privacy.
4. Toggle the switch for Private account to the "on" position. If you have a Business Account, Instagram will prompt you to switch to a Personal or Creator account first, as Business Accounts cannot be private.

You can switch back to a public account at any time by following the same steps and toggling the switch off. Remember, when you switch from public to private, your existing followers are automatically approved.

Fine-Tune Who Sees Your Stories

Instagram Stories are a core part of the experience, but you don't have to share them with everyone. You have granular control over their visibility.

1. Create a "Close Friends" List

Your Close Friends list allows you to share Stories with a select group of people you choose. When you post a Story to this list, it will have a green circle around it instead of the usual pink/orange one, signaling that it's exclusive content. This is perfect for personal updates, inside jokes, or content intended for a specific audience.

How to set up your Close Friends list:

• Go to your profile, tap the hamburger menu, and select Close Friends.
• Search for and select the people you want to add to your list. They will not be notified that you've added or removed them.
• When you create a new Story, you’ll see an option at the bottom to share it with your Close Friends instead of "Your Story."

2. Hide Your Story From Specific People

If you don't want to maintain a separate list but just want to prevent certain accounts from seeing your Stories, you can hide them from specific individuals. This applies to all of your Stories, live videos, and Story highlights moving forward. The people you hide your Story from won't be notified.

How to hide your Story:

• Go to Settings and privacy > Hide story and live.
• Tap Hide story and live from.
• Search for and select the people you want to hide your story from, then tap Done.

3. Control Story Replies and Sharing

You can also decide who gets to interact with your Stories. You can limit who can reply and prevent others from sharing your Story to their own messages.

• In Settings and privacy, scroll down and tap on Messages and story replies.
• Select Story replies to choose whether to allow replies from Everyone, People you follow, or to turn them off completely.
• You can find sharing options under Sharing and remixes in the Settings menu. Here you can toggle whether you want to allow others to share your stories in messages.

Manage Your Comments and Community Health

A thriving comments section can be incredible, but unwanted negativity can quickly sour the experience. Instagram provides powerful tools to manage who can comment and what they can say.

1. Block Comments From Specific People

If a particular user is consistently leaving unwanted comments, you can block them from commenting on your posts entirely, without fully blocking their account. They will still be able to see your posts, but their comments won't be visible to anyone but them.

How to block a user from commenting:

• Go to Settings and privacy and tap on Block accounts. While you block their whole account from here, a simpler way is through the comments section on your content.
• Alternatively, swipe left on a comment from that person. Tap the exclamation mark ("report") icon, then select Restrict [username] or Block [username].

2. Automatically Hide Offensive Comments

Instagram uses machine learning to automatically hide comments that its system detects as offensive or related to bullying. This feature is enabled by default, but you can adjust its strength.

• Head to Settings and privacy and tap on Hidden Words.
• In this section, you'll see options for "Hide comments." You can turn on Advanced comment filtering for an even stronger filter.

3. Use the "Hidden Words" Filter for Custom Words and Phrases

This is one of the most powerful and underrated privacy features. You can create a custom list of words, phrases, and even emojis that you don't want to see in your comments or message requests. If a comment contains anything from your list, it's automatically hidden.

How to set up custom hidden words:

1. Go to Settings and privacy >, Hidden Words.
2. Scroll down and tap Manage custom words and phrases.
3. Add any words, phrases, numbers, or emojis you want to filter out, separated by commas.
4. Make sure the toggles for Hide comments and Hide message requests are on.

This is incredibly useful for brands wanting to filter out competitor names or for anyone looking to avoid triggers or specific types of spam.

Use "Restrict" for a Softer Alternative to Blocking

"Restricting" an account is a subtle way to limit unwanted interactions without the finality of a block. The person you restrict won't be notified, and it can be a great first step in managing a difficult follower.

What happens when you restrict someone?

• Their comments on your posts will only be visible to them and you. You can choose to "Approve" the comment to make it visible to everyone, delete it, or ignore it. You won't receive notifications for their comments.
• Their Direct Messages will be moved to your Message Requests folder, and you won't get notifications for them. They also won't be able to see when you've read their messages or when you're active online.

How to restrict an account:

• Go to the person's profile, tap the three dots in the top right corner, and select Restrict.
• You can also swipe left on a comment from them or find them in your DMs and access the option through their message settings.

Control Tags, Mentions, and Remixes

Controlling where your username and content appear is key to managing your online reputation. You can decide who is allowed to tag or mention you.

1. Manage Photo and Video Tags

By default, when someone tags you in a photo or video, it can automatically appear on your profile under the "Tagged Photos" tab. You can change this to a manual approval process.

How to manually approve tags:

1. Go to Settings and privacy >, Tags and mentions.
2. Under "How you manage tags," select Manually approve tags and turn the toggle on.
3. From now on, you'll receive a notification when you're tagged. You can review and approve a tagged post for it to appear on your profile tab.

In this same section, you can also decide who can tag you in the first place: "Allow tags from everyone," "Allow tags from people you follow," or "Don’t allow tags."

2. Control Who Can Mention You (@username)

Similarly, you can control who can mention your handle in their stories, comments, or captions.

• In the Tags and mentions settings menu, you'll see options for "Who can @mention you."
• Here you can choose to "Allow mentions from everyone," "people you follow," or "Don’t allow mentions." Choosing a stricter option can significantly reduce spam notifications.

Limit Unwanted Direct Messages (DMs)

Instagram's direct message system allows you to define who can slide into your DMs.

1. Navigate to Settings and privacy >, Messages and story replies.
2. Tap on Message controls.
3. Here, you can set separate rules for "Your followers on Instagram" and "Others on Instagram." For each group, you can choose whether their messages go directly to your Primary inbox or into the Message Requests folder. You can also choose not to receive their requests at all.

Setting "Others on Instagram" to deliver to "Message Requests" is a great way to filter communications from people you don't know.

Final Thoughts

Instagram provides a surprisingly deep suite of privacy tools that empower you to design your own online experience. From making your account fully private to fine-tuning who can comment or tag you, these settings give you the control to build a community and share content on your own terms.

Managing all these interactions - comments, messages, and mentions - is a huge part of running a successful social media presence, but it can get overwhelming fast. At Postbase, we built our unified inbox to solve this exact problem. By bringing all your comments and DMs from all your platforms into one streamlined feed, we make it simple to stay on top of engagement without constantly switching between apps, so you can focus on building your community, not just policing it.