How Do You Hide Instagram Followers in 2025?

Social media is great for sharing, connecting, and staying in the loop. But sometimes, it feels like we’re sharing just a little too much. Not everything needs to be public, and that includes your Instagram follower list.

Maybe you want to keep your connections to yourself. Maybe you’re trying to clean up your digital space. Or maybe you’re just tired of people snooping through your profile. Whatever the reason, it’s completely valid to want a bit more privacy.

Let’s walk through how you can hide your followers on Instagram and keep your account a little more low-key.

Can You Hide Your Followers on Instagram?

Short answer: not completely. Instagram doesn’t let you completely hide your followers from everyone. If someone already follows you, they’ll still be able to see who else follows you and who you follow.

But there are some useful settings and tricks that help you limit who can view your follower list. Especially when it comes to people who don’t follow you at all. You’ve got options.

Let’s go through them step by step.

1. Set Your Instagram Profile to Private

The easiest way to keep your followers list out of sight is by switching your account to private. It’s the best starting point if you want to keep your follower list away from strangers.

When your Instagram account is set to private:

• Only people who follow you and have been approved by you can see your full profile.
• Your posts, Stories, follower list, and the people you follow are all hidden from the public.
• People can still request to follow you, but you’ll get to decide whether or not to accept them.

Here’s how to set your Instagram to private:

1. Open the Instagram app on your phone.
2. Tap your profile picture in the bottom right.
3. Hit the three lines in the top right corner.
4. Tap Settings and privacy.
5. Go to Account privacy.
6. Toggle Private account.

Once this is done, people who don’t follow you will only see the number of your followers—not who they are.

2. Remove Followers You Don’t Want

If you’ve already approved followers you no longer want to share that information with, there’s an easy fix. You can remove them manually without having to block them or cause any awkwardness.

To remove someone from your followers list:

1. Head to your profile and tap your Followers list.
2. Find the person you want to remove.
3. Tap the three dots next to their name.
4. Select Remove follower.

They won’t get a notification, and you’ll have more control over who can see what on your profile. Think of it like tidying up your digital space.

It’s a good idea to check your follower list every now and then and make sure it still feels like the community you want to have around.

3. Mute Instead of Unfollow

Muting on Instagram isn’t exactly about hiding your followers, but it can help you manage your feed without unnecessary drama.

If someone’s posts or Stories are cluttering up your feed but you don’t want to unfollow them, you can mute them. This way, their content disappears from your feed, but you still technically follow each other.

To mute someone on Instagram:

1. Visit their profile.
2. Tap Following.
3. Select Mute and choose whether to mute Posts, Stories, or both.

This is perfect if you’re trying to keep your Instagram feed clean and focused on the content you care about most.

4. Block Specific Instagram Users

If you want to fully cut someone off from seeing your content or your follower list, blocking them is the most direct option.

Once you block someone:

• They can’t see your posts, Stories, or follower list.
• You disappear from their view entirely, including in search results.
• They won’t be notified that you blocked them, so you can avoid any unnecessary drama.

Here’s how to block on Instagram:

1. Go to their profile.
2. Tap the three dots in the top right.
3. Select Block.

They won’t get a notification—you’ll just disappear from their Instagram experience. It’s a simple step with a big result. If your goal is total privacy from a specific person, this is your best bet.

5. Use Instagram Restriction Mode

Instagram also has a feature called Restrict, which gives you a middle ground between blocking and letting someone roam free on your profile.

When you restrict someone:

• Their comments on your posts won’t be visible to others unless you approve them.
• They won’t be able to see when you’re online.
• Messages from them go to your message request folder, and you don’t have to reply.
• If they mention or tag you, it won’t be visible until you allow it.

To restrict someone on Instagram:

1. Go to their profile.
2. Tap the three dots in the top right.
3. Choose Restrict.

Want to Grow on Instagram While Keeping Things Private?

Once you’ve taken steps to protect your Instagram privacy, you might be wondering what’s next. Just because you prefer to keep certain things private doesn’t mean you’re not interested in building your presence online.

Whether you’re a content creator, brand, or small business owner, growth is still a priority. But managing everything manually can take up a lot of your time. From posting regularly to tracking performance and staying active with your audience, it adds up quickly.

That’s where Metricool comes in. It gives you one central place to plan, publish, measure, and manage your Instagram strategy more efficiently.

What You Can Do with Metricool (Even with a Free Account)

Metricool helps you stay consistent and organized, no matter if you’re managing just one profile or several. Here’s what you can do:

• Schedule content: Plan your posts weeks or months ahead.
• Get detailed analytics: Track what’s working and what’s not.
• Run ads: Launch and manage Instagram ads directly from the platform.
• Track hashtags: Discover what hashtags actually bring results.
• Monitor competitors: See how your content stacks up.
• Generate reports: One-click reports for your brand or clients.
• Manage multiple platforms: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and more.
• Reply to DMs and comments: Handle community management in one place.
• Find your best times to post: Metricool tells you when your audience is online.
• Use AI tools: Get help writing posts, translating, adding hashtags, and more.
• Integrate with other tools: Like Canva, Google Data Studio, Adobe Express, and more.

Gretchen Oestreicher , 23 May 2025