There is no single "make my Facebook private" button. Instead, your privacy is spread across a handful of settings: who sees new posts, who sees old ones, who can look at your friends list, and how strangers can find you in the first place. Changing six of them gets you most of the way, and it takes about ten minutes.

Quick steps:

  1. Run Privacy Checkup from Settings & privacy.
  2. Set Who can see your future posts? to Friends.
  3. Use Limit Past Posts to pull older public posts back to friends only.
  4. Change Who can see your friends list? away from Public.
  5. Under How people find and contact you, restrict lookups by email and phone, and turn off links from search engines outside Facebook.
  6. In Profile and tagging, turn on both review options under Reviewing.

Where the settings live

Facebook moves its menus around often, so always start here.

  • On a computer: click your profile picture in the top right, choose Settings & privacy, then Settings.
  • In the iPhone or Android app: tap Menu in the top right, scroll down, tap Settings & privacy, then Settings.

Most of what follows sits under Audience and visibility. In the app, Facebook says this section now holds your block list and the controls for who sees your posts and profile. If a label here doesn't match your screen exactly, look for the closest heading in that section. Instagram has separate settings, covered in our guide to making your Instagram account private.

Start with Privacy Checkup

Privacy Checkup is a guided tour of the settings that matter most and a quick way to start. On a computer, click your profile picture, then Settings & privacy, then Privacy Checkup. You need to be using your main profile, the one you created at sign-up.

It walks you through several areas:

  • What you share: profile details such as your phone number, email and birthday, the audience for future and past posts, and your block list.
  • Account security: your password and alerts for logins from places Facebook doesn't recognise.
  • How people find you: who can send friend requests and who can look you up by phone number or email.
  • Data and ads: outside apps and sites you signed in to with Facebook, and what advertisers can use to reach you.

When you have finished, check the settings below one by one.

Posts: the future and the past

New posts. Go to Settings, scroll to Audience and visibility and click Posts. Next to Who can see your future posts?, pick an audience such as Friends, then click Done. You can still pick a different audience for a single post while writing it; that choice applies only to that post, and the next one goes back to your default.

Old posts. In the same Posts area, find Limit who can see past posts and click Limit Past Posts, then confirm. Every earlier post that was visible to more than your friends, including Public ones, becomes Friends only. Before you run it, know three things:

  • There is no one-click undo. To reopen a post later, you have to change its audience by hand.
  • Posts you shared with a custom audience, such as Close Friends, are left as they are.
  • If you tagged someone in a post, that person and their audience still count as viewers.

Posts by other people that you're tagged in follow the audience their author chose.

Friends list and who can find you

Friends list. Facebook makes the Friends section of your profile public unless you change it. Open Settings, go to Audience and visibility, choose How people find and contact you, and set Who can see your friends list? to Friends or Only Me. This only covers your own profile: if a friend leaves their list public, anyone can still see that the two of you are connected.

Lookup by email or phone. In the same section, there are separate entries for People with your email address and People with your phone number (on a computer, click View beside each). The choices are Possible Connections, Friends of Friends, Friends and No one, and the starting value is Possible Connections. This mainly shapes People You May Know suggestions drawn from contacts that others upload. Searching Facebook for your number or email won't show your profile, but a search for an email address that contains your full name may still find you. Whether your number or email is displayed on your profile is a separate choice.

Search engines outside Facebook. Also under How people find and contact you, use the toggle that asks whether search engines outside of Facebook may link to your profile. Switching it off stops search engines from linking straight to your profile and stops Facebook from sending them your public posts. Anything you share publicly can still be picked up by crawlers, and copies a search engine has already saved can linger until it refreshes. Facebook can't file removal requests for you, so contact Google, Bing or Yahoo directly if an old result needs to go.

Tags and posts by others

Under Audience and visibility, open Profile and tagging and scroll to Reviewing. Two toggles there are worth turning on:

  • The toggle starting Review posts you're tagged in… keeps tagged posts off your profile until you approve them. They can still show up in Feed and search, because the person who posted them chooses the audience.
  • The toggle starting Review tags people add to your posts… (on a computer it reads "your own posts") holds back tags that others add to things you posted until you say yes.

In the same area, Who can see what others post on your profile? decides the audience for posts friends leave on your profile.

Profile lock, where you have it

In some countries Facebook offers a profile lock, and it says plainly that the feature isn't available everywhere. Where it is, people who aren't your friends see a "Profile locked" notice and only a limited view of your profile. According to Facebook's help page, locking:

  • limits photos and posts on your profile, your stories, new posts, and your full-size profile and cover photos to friends;
  • changes posts you previously shared as Public to Friends;
  • switches on profile review and tag review;
  • leaves only part of your About information visible to everyone.

In the app, Facebook now lists Profile Locking under Permissions in Settings. If you don't see it, the feature probably isn't offered in your region, and the settings above are the way to get a similar result.

Whatever you do, some details stay public: your name and gender, your profile and cover photos, your username and user ID, and your networks. Choose that photo with this in mind. Facebook's page on data scraping adds that scrapers mostly target public information, so keep Public for things you don't mind anyone copying.

Secure the account

Locking down your audience means little if someone else can sign in as you. Privacy Checkup's security section lets you update your password and turn on alerts for unrecognised logins; use both. Pick a password you don't use anywhere else and add two-factor authentication. For a practical routine, see our guide to password hygiene after credential leaks.

Your audience settings and your IP address

Every setting in this guide is about people: which friends, strangers or search engines can see what you post. None of it touches your connection. Facebook still receives your IP address each time you use it, and the Wi-Fi network or mobile provider you are on can see that you are connecting to Facebook. A VPN hides your real IP address from the sites and apps you use and keeps the local network from seeing which services you connect to or what you send, but you are signed in under your own name, so your Facebook account is not anonymous. Our explainer What is a VPN? covers what it does and doesn't change. You can check the address you are currently showing with What is my IP, and VPNRice apps are on the download page.

FAQ

Can I make my whole Facebook profile private?

Not with one switch. Set future posts to Friends, use Limit Past Posts, hide your friends list, and restrict how people find you. Where profile lock is available, it bundles several of these together.

Why can strangers still see my profile picture?

Facebook treats a short list of details as public information for everyone: your name, gender, username, user ID and networks, plus your profile and cover photos. No setting hides them.

Can I undo Limit Past Posts?

Not in one go. You would have to change the audience of each post individually.

I turned off search engine linking, but my profile still shows up on Google. Why?

The search engine may still have an old copy saved. It should drop the link once it refreshes, or you can ask that search engine directly to remove it.

Last checked: October 2026. Menu names can differ slightly between app versions and regions.

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