Controlling Your Visibility
By default, anyone can view your profile and posts on Instagram. You can make your posts private so that only followers you approve can see them. If your posts are set to private, only your approved followers will see them on hashtag or location pages.
To set your posts to private from the Instagram app:
- Tap
to go to your profile, then tap
.
- Tap
Settings.
- Tap Account Privacy then tap to toggle Private Account on.
Things to keep in mind about private posts:
- Private posts you share to social networks may be visible to the public depending on your privacy settings for those networks. For example, a post you share to Twitter that was set to private on Instagram may be visible to the people who can see your Twitter posts.
- Once you make your posts private, people will have to send you a follow request to see your posts, your followers list or your following list.
- Follow requests appear in
Activity, where you can approve or ignore them.
- If someone was already following before you set your posts to private and you don't want them to see your posts, you can block them.
- People can send a photo or video directly to you even if they’re not following you.
If your account is public, anyone can like or comment on your photos and videos. If you want to prevent specific people from liking or commenting on your posts, you can block them.
If your account is private, only the people you've approved as followers will be able to like or comment on your photos and videos.
Comments that may be inappropriate, offensive or bullying are automatically filtered out from your posts and live videos. Comments are filtered automatically by default, but you can always change this setting:
- Go to your profile and tap
- Tap
- Tap Comment Controls.
- Tap next to Hide Offensive Comments to turn it on.
If you have the offensive comment filter turned on, you can also turn on a keyword filter to hide comments that contain specific words, phrases, numbers or emoji that you'd like to avoid.
- Go to your profile and tap
- Tap
- Tap Comment Controls.
- Make sure that Hide Offensive Comments is turned on.
- Tap next to Manual Filter to turn it on.
Enter specific words, phrases, numbers or emoji in the text box to filter out comments.
Keep in mind that default and custom keyword filtering aren't currently available in all languages:
- Default Keywords: The default list of keywords is only available in certain languages
- Custom Keywords: Currently, custom keyword filtering doesn't support languages without spaces (ex: Chinese, Japanese, Thai)
When you turn on comment filtering, it’s applied to both new and existing comments on your posts. When you turn off comment filtering, filtered comments on your posts will be restored.
Learn more about deleting and reporting comments.
If someone with a private profile shares a photo or video to a social network (like Twitter, Facebook and so on) using Instagram, the image will be visible on that network and the permalink will be active. In other words, the photo will be publicly accessible by anyone who has access to its direct link/URL.
Keep in mind that sharing a photo or video to a social network doesn't mean that the image will be visible in Instagram. Your account will still appear private to those who aren't approved followers.
If your account is set to private, you can remove people from your followers list:
- Go to your profile
- Tap Followers at the top of the screen
- Tap
(iPhone) or
(Android) to the right of the follower you'd like to remove, then select Remove
When you remove a follower, they aren't notified that you've removed them.
You can also block someone to get them to stop following you. People aren't notified when you block them. Learn more about blocking people.
If your account is set to private and you add a hashtag to your post, the post won't appear publicly on the corresponding hashtag page. Only your approved followers will be able to see your posts on hashtag pages or in Instagram Direct messages.
You can archive a post you've shared to hide it from your profile and make it so your followers and other people on Instagram can't see it. When you archive a post, it keeps all its likes and comments.
To archive a post:
- Go to your profile.
- Tap the post you'd like to archive.
- Tap
(iOS) or
(Android) in the top right.
- Select Archive
Once you've archived a post, you can choose to show it on your profile again. The post will return to its original spot on your profile.
To show an archived post on your profile:
- Go to your profile and tap
in the top right (iPhone) or top left (Android). - Tap the post you'd like to show on your profile.
- Tap
When you like a photo, it's visible to anyone who can see the post. Your followers may also see your username below a photo you've liked, no matter how many likes it has (example: 
[your username] and 12 others).
After 4 likes, photos show the number of likes, along with usernames of some people you follow who have liked it.
If your account is set to private:
- Only your approved followers can see your posts, including any likes and comments
- Likes on your posts won't appear in the
- When you like a public post, your like will be visible to everyone and your username will be clickable below the post, but only approved followers can see your posts
When someone taps Follow on your Instagram profile, they'll see suggestions of similar profiles they might also want to follow, such as mutual friends or other people they might know. If you don't want these suggestions to appear on your profile, you can opt out:
- Log into instagram.com from a desktop computer or your phone's browser.
- Tap or click
- Tap or click next to Similar Account Suggestions, then click Submit.
Keep in mind that when you opt out of account suggestions on your profile, you won't appear as a suggestion on someone else's profile either.
If your posts are set to public, anyone will be able to see your profile by visiting instagram.com/[your username] on the web.
If your posts are set to private, your photos will be visible to people logged into Instagram who you've approved to follow you.
Learn more about adjusting your privacy settings. The privacy settings you set on mobile are the same as your privacy settings on the web.
Your images may appear in Google search results if you've logged into your account using a web viewer, which authorizes them to access your profile and images. These third-party sites have been created with our API and aren't affiliated with Instagram directly.
If you don't want your photos or videos to appear on Google, we suggest revoking access to the third-party website or setting your account to private. It may take some time for these sites and Google to re-index and remove the images, even if you delete your account.
If you need to contact the app that's displaying your photographs on Google to expedite the process, here are links to support pages for popular third-party services utilizing our API:
- Webstagram / dm.stagram / search.stagram: Webstagram
- Gramfeed: @gramfeeed on Twitter
- Instagreat: @elliotkember on Twitter
- InstaGallery: http://infinitapps.com/contact.html
- InstaView: http://www.roguesheep.com/support.html
- Flipboard: https://flipboard.com/topic/instagram
- Statigram: contact@statigr.am
- Followgram: @followgrame on Twitter
- Cityowls: contact@cityowls.com
Instagram isn't directly associated with third-party apps that utilize our API such as web viewers, desktop apps or image printing services, and we can't assist you in speeding up the process to remove any Instagram images that may appear on Google.
You can also find more information on removing a page or site from Google's search results.