For a lot of people due to privacy reasons, they do not want to show how many followers they have, or simply prefer to hide their followers. Instagram does no provide this option so how to hide followers on Instagram?
An Instagram follower is someone who follows your account. This means they see your posts in their feed and can interact with them. Followers can also see your Stories and send you Direct Messages.
If you have a public account, anyone can follow you. If you have a private account, people must request to follow you and you approve or deny their request. You can see how many followers you have from the main page of your profile. The number is next to your profile picture.
Can you hide followers on Instagram?
The quick answer is no, you cannot hide your followers on Instagram regardless what account you use. However, there are some workaround methods that can help you achieve a similar effect, although not completely hide your followers numbers.
Social media platforms want the number of followers to remain visible because this is what drives their existence. Since social media apps are driven by the number of followers a user has on its account, it only makes sense that they would want this metric to be highly visible.
Let’s explore each of the tips & tricks on how to hide followers on Instagram.
Option 1 Minimize the visibility of your followers list
The first option to make it harder for others to see your follower count is by making your follower list less visible. To achieve this, you have to make your account private.
When your account is private, only people who you approve can see your posts. This means that your follower list will also only be visible to your followers. Others cannot view who are your followers, they just see the numbers.
To make your account private:
1. Go to your profile and tap the three lines in the top right corner
2. Select Settings
3. Tap Privacy > Account privacy > Private account
4. Toggle Private account on
Option 2 Hide your followers list from particular users
The second option is to hide your follower list from specific users. This can be done by blocking, removing or restricting certain users from seeing your profile hence they won’t be able to see your followers.
Blocking people
It means that they cannot see your posts, cannot follow you, and cannot see your follower list. They also cannot see any posts that you are tagged in. If you have a public account, blocking someone also means that they cannot see your profile picture or send you Direct Messages.
The blocked person won’t be notified that they’ve been blocked. Here are 3 ways how to block someone on Instagram:
Block someone from the Settings menu.
1. Go to your profile and tap the three lines in the top right corner
2. Select Settings
3. Tap Privacy > Blocked accounts > Add
4. Search or enter the username of the person you want to block and tap Block
5.Tap Block again to confirm
Block someone from their profile page.
1. Go to the profile of the person you want to block
2. Tap the three dots in the top right corner
3. Tap Block > Tap Block again to confirm
Block someone from Direct Messages.
1. Go to your Direct Messages and tap on the chat conversation with the person you want to block
2. Tap on their name and then scroll all the way down
3. Select Block > Tap Block again to confirm
Once you block someone, their messages and calls will no longer be visible in your Direct Messages inbox. If you want to view the messages from someone you’ve blocked, you can tap Unlock in Settings.
Remove your followers
This is a more extreme measure and you should only do this if you’re sure that you want to remove someone from your follower list. If you remove someone, they won’t be notified and they can still see your posts (unless your account is private). They won’t be able to follow you or comment on your posts.
You can remove someone from your followers list easily by 2 steps below:
1. Go to your profile and tap on the Followers
2.Find the person you wanted to remove and tap on Remove
Restrict accounts
When you restrict someone, it limits what that person can see on your profile without completely removing them.
Once you restrict someone, they won’t be able to see when you’re online or if you’ve read their messages. They also can’t see your last seen status. The new comments that people make on your posts will only be visible to the person who made them. If you want others to be able to see the comment, you can approve it or delete it.
To restrict someone, you can follow the same steps as blocking people, the only difference is you choose Restrict instead of Block. See instructions here.
If you want to remove the restriction, you can go to that person’s profile and tap Unrestrict.
Option 3 Use a secondary account
The third option to make it harder for others to see your follower count is by using a secondary account. This way, you can keep your primary account private for family & close friends only while using a second account to follow and interact with people in public without care about hiding your followers list.
Did you know that you’re allowed to have up to 5 Instagram accounts? And, if you do, it’s easy to switch between them without having to go through the process of logging in and out each time.
Here is how to add a second account on Instagram.
1. Open the Instagram app and go to your profile page
2. Tap on the three lines in the top right corner
3. Select Settings then scroll all the way down and tap on Add account
And to switch between accounts, simply go back to your profile page and tap on your username at the top. A menu will pop up with all of the accounts that you’re currently logged into. Select the one that you want to switch to.
Wrap things up
You can’t really hide your followers as Instagram does not offer that option, however there are few tricks & workarounds to make it difficult for people to see your followers list as we described above. The options are to minimize the visibility of your followers, hide it from certain people or simply create a secondary account.
If you have TikTok account and would like to do the same and hide the following list there, check out our guide here.
Hope this article helps answer your query on how to hide followers on Instagram.