Instagram Privacy Settings You Should Know

In an age of social media where we love sharing every detail of our lives online, privacy plays an important role. All social networks and chat apps offer plenty of privacy settings, but very few people actually use them. Since Instagram is all about photos and videos, you need to change a few privacy settings for a better experience. In this article, we've shared Instagram privacy settings with you. What are the Instagram privacy settings? Let's take a look!

What Are the Instagram Privacy Settings? May 2022

Private Profile

This is the most popular privacy setting. By default, Instagram accounts are public, meaning anyone on Instagram can see, like, and comment on your photos. Fortunately, though, it offers the option to make your profile private. When you have a private profile, only your followers can see your published photos and stories. This doesn't change how you view things, since you can still see other public profiles' photos and stories. Follow these steps to make your profile private:

• Open the Instagram app and go to your profile screen. Then, on Android phones, tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner to open Settings. On iPhone, tap the gear icon.
• Under Settings, tap Private Account and turn it on.

Alternatively, tap Account Privacy and enable Private Account. For some odd reason, Instagram keeps the same setting in two places.

Removing a Follower

Once you make your profile private, you'll find plenty of people on your Followers list that you don't want there. Previously, you had to block such users, but that's changed now. Thanks to Instagram, you can now manually remove followers with a single tap. And the best part is, they won't be notified about it. You don't need a private profile to remove followers — you can do this even with a public profile. Here's how to remove followers:

• Go to your profile and tap Followers.
• You'll see a three-dot icon next to each follower. Tap it for the follower you want to remove and select Remove.

Turn Off Activity Status and the Green Dot

A few months ago, Instagram rolled out the dreaded activity status feature. Basically, it shows the last active time on Instagram for people you direct message. If that wasn't enough, they recently introduced an online status indicator. When someone is online, you'll see a green dot next to their name in Direct Messages (DMs). Here are the steps to turn them off.

• Go to your profile and tap the three-dot icon or the gear icon.
• Scroll down and tap Activity Status. On the next screen, disable Show Activity Status. This turns off both the activity status and the green dot.

Block Comments

Sometimes, when people don't like a picture or video you've posted, they resort to browsing the comments. If you want, Instagram offers the option to turn off comments. You can do this for all posts in General Settings, or even for a single post. Here's what you need to do to stop comments on all your posts.

• On your profile, tap the gear icon (iPhone) or the three-dot icon (Android) to go to Settings.
• Under Settings, tap Comment Controls. Then you'll get two options: Allow Comments From and Block Comments From.

You can use the first option to whitelist comments, meaning only the people you add there can comment on your posts. On the other hand, when you block people from commenting, everyone except those users can comment. To turn off comments for a single post, open the post and tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner. Select the Turn Off Commenting option.

Stop Direct Messages (DM)

Anyone on Instagram can message you regardless of whether they follow you or not. However, messages from people other than your followers are kept in a separate folder (Requests) in your DMs. While Instagram doesn't let you stop DMs for regular messages, you can restrict DMs for stories. Instagram offers three settings for message replies to stories: Everyone, People You Follow, and Off. Here's how to set it up.

• Open Instagram Settings by tapping the three-dot icon (Android) or the gear icon (iPhone) on the profile screen.
• Tap Story Controls and select your preferred option under Allow Message Replies.

Disabling Resharing Posts to Stories

If you have a public profile, users can reshare your posts to their stories along with your username. While some people don't mind this, you can turn it off if you're not happy with the feature. Follow these steps to do so:

• Open Instagram Settings.
• Scroll down and tap Resharing to Stories. Then disable it on the next screen.

Hide Your Story

Instagram offers different privacy settings for posts and stories. While you can't change the privacy of individual posts, you can customize the privacy of stories. This means you can hide stories from specific followers. Follow these steps to hide stories:

• Open Instagram Settings and tap Story Controls.
• Under the Hide Story From option, select the followers you want to hide your stories from.

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