How to Hide a Post from Someone on Instagram, FB, & TikTok

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Stop someone from seeing specific posts in a few easy steps

Written by Candace Gasper | Edited by Nicole Levine, MFA

Last Updated: February 11, 2026 Fact Checked

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Sometimes you want to post something on social media that you don't want a certain person to see. Whether it's a video or photo post, you may be able to tweak the post's privacy settings to make sure someone can't see it without blocking them. In this article, we'll teach you how to stop someone from seeing your post on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Preventing Someone from Seeing Your Post

On Instagram, you can hide stories and reels from individual people, but you can't control the privacy for individual posts.
On Facebook, you can choose the "Friends except…" option to exclude certain people from seeing your post.
On TikTok, you can choose the "Friends" privacy option on individual posts to prevent people you don't follow from seeing them.

Section 1 of 3:

Stop Someone from Seeing Your Instagram Posts

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1
Hide a story or reel from one person. You can stop people from seeing your Instagram stories and video reels using the Close Friends feature. This won't work on regular photo posts–just stories and reels. To do this, just add the people who you want to be able to see the post to the Close Friends filter, then set your story or reel's privacy to Close Friends. Anyone who isn't on the list won't be able to see your story.^{[1]
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- To create your Close Friends list, go to your profile, tap ☰, and then Close Friends. Select the people you want to be able to see your post, then tap Done.
- When posting a story, tap Close Friends when you're ready to share. Once posted, anyone who isn't on your Close Friends list won't see the story.^{[2]
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- When posting a reel, tap the Audience selector, then tap Close Friends to prevent everyone who isn't on the list from seeing your video.^{[3]
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Hide a photo post from one person. Unlike on Facebook, anyone who follows you (or views your profile, if it's public) can see your posts, and there's no way to change that. The only option is to block them and make your Instagram profile private, which makes it so they can't see any of your posts.
- To block someone, go to their profile, tap the three dots at the top, then tap Block.^{[4]
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- To make your Instagram private, tap your profile picture or icon to go to your profile, then go to ☰ > Account privacy. Tap the toggle switch next to "Private account," then tap Switch to private.^{[5]
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Archive a post to prevent everyone from seeing it. If you created an Instagram post but don't want anyone to see it (and you don't want to delete it forever), you can archive the post. To do so, just tap the three dots on the post and select Archive.^{[6]
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- After archiving a post, you can view it any time. To see your archived posts, tap ☰ on your profile, then tap Archive. Tap the Story Archive menu at the top and select Posts archive to display your archived posts.
- To restore an archived post to your profile so others can see it again, tap the archived post, tap the three dots at the top, then select Show on profile.

Section 2 of 3:

Stop Someone from Seeing Your Facebook Posts

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1
Hide a post from one person. If you just want to prevent someone from seeing a single post, Facebook makes it easy to control your audience:^{[7]
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- If you're still making the post, click or tap the audience selector drop-down. If you already made the post, click or tap the three dots ••• on the post and select Edit privacy (mobile) or Edit audience (desktop).
- In the mobile app, select Friends except…, choose the person you want to stop from seeing your post, then tap Done.
- On a computer, click Custom, add the person's name to the "Don't share with" field, and click Done to save.
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Hide all your posts from one person. Want to make sure a particular person can't see any of your posts? You have a few different options:
- Make your posts friends-only and unfriend them. If you've made a lot of public posts in the past, check out our guide to mass-changing Facebook post privacy to learn how to make them all friends-only at once.
- Add the person to your Restricted list. If you don't want to unfriend them but don't want them to see your friends-only posts, you can restrict them. They'll still see your public posts, but if you make any private posts, they won't know. To restrict someone on Facebook:^{[8]
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  - Go to their profile and click or tap Friends at the top.
  - Select Edit friend lists, then tap Restricted.
  - Tap Done to save your changes.
  - Be sure to make your posts friends-only to prevent this person from seeing them.

Section 3 of 3:

Stop Someone from Seeing Your TikTok Posts

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1
Hide a post from one person. If there are certain people you don't want a post to be visible to, you can choose Friends as the privacy option for that post. When the privacy is set to Friends, only the people you follow who also follow you back can see your post. As long as you don't follow the person you want to hide the post from, they won't see it if it's set to Friends. Here's how to do it:^{[9]
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- When creating a post, tap the privacy menu (it says "Everyone can view this post" by default), then select Friends. Here's a quick overview of the options:
  - Everyone means the post is visible to everyone on TikTok.
  - Friends means the post will only be visible to the people you follow who also follow you back. If someone follows you but you don't follow them back, they won't be able to see the post.
  - Only you means the post is private–you're the only one who will see it on your profile.
- If you already made the post and want to hide it from someone, tap the post, then tap •••. On the resulting menu, tap Privacy settings, then choose Friends.
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Hide all your posts from one person. The easiest way to ensure a TikTok user can't see your posts is to block them. To block someone on TikTok, tap the "Share" arrow at the upper-right corner of their profile, then tap Block.^{[10]
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- You can also set all your posts as Friends to prevent people you don't follow from seeing them.