You can share quick moments with your Instagram followers by posting Instagram stories, which are fullscreen photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours. If you don’t want someone specific to see your Instagram stories, you can add them to your Hide From Story list. Here’s how to hide your story on Instagram.

How Hiding Stories on Instagram Works

When you hide stories from followers, they’re none the wiser that you did so. They’ll still be able to see your regular posts in their home feed, view your profile, and interact with you—they just won’t see your stories appear in their stories feed or on your profile. This may be preferable to blocking them or removing them as a follower.

How to Hide Instagram Stories From Followers in Settings

If you want to hide your stories from certain people prior to posting something, you can do this through your settings.

The following instructions can be followed whether you’re using Instagram for iOS or Android. Images are provided for the iOS version, but Android users shouldn’t have any issues following along.

  • Open the Instagram app and tap the profile icon in the bottom menu to go to your profile.
  • Tap the menu icon in the top right corner.
  • Tap Settings.
  • Tap Privacy.
  • Tap Story under Interactions.
  • Tap Hide Story From.
  • Tap the circle to the right of any name to apply a blue checkmark to anyone you want to hide your story from.
  • If you have a lot of followers, use the search field at the top to type in a name and find them faster.
  • Tap Done (iOS) or the blue checkmark (Android) in the top right. Anyone included in your Hide Story From list won’t see your stories appear in their stories feed on the home tab or circled on your profile.
  • You can edit this list any time you want to include more people or to take someone off the list and allow them to see your stories again.

How to Hide Instagram Stories From Followers From the Viewer List on a Story

You can see who’s viewed your stories that are currently posted. If you notice someone in the view counter who you don’t want viewing your stories, you can hide them from here.

Open the Instagram app and tap the profile icon in the bottom menu to go to your profile.

Tap the menu icon in the top right corner.

Tap Settings.

Tap Privacy.

Tap Story under Interactions.

Tap Hide Story From.

Tap the circle to the right of any name to apply a blue checkmark to anyone you want to hide your story from.

If you have a lot of followers, use the search field at the top to type in a name and find them faster.

Tap Done (iOS) or the blue checkmark (Android) in the top right. Anyone included in your Hide Story From list won’t see your stories appear in their stories feed on the home tab or circled on your profile.

You can edit this list any time you want to include more people or to take someone off the list and allow them to see your stories again.

  • Tap to view one of your stories, then tap the Seen by X view counter at the bottom to see a list of followers who’ve viewed it.
  • Find a follower you want to hide your stories from and tap the three dots that appear to the right of their name.
  • Tap Hide Story From [Name]. They’ll automatically be added to your Hide Story From list, which you can access from your settings.

Extra Tips About Hiding Your Instagram Stories

Please note that you can only hide current followers from your stories—not just anyone. So if your Instagram profile is set to public and you see people who aren’t following you also viewing your stories, you might want to consider making your Instagram profile private.

Tap to view one of your stories, then tap the Seen by X view counter at the bottom to see a list of followers who’ve viewed it.

Find a follower you want to hide your stories from and tap the three dots that appear to the right of their name.

Tap Hide Story From [Name]. They’ll automatically be added to your Hide Story From list, which you can access from your settings.

You might also notice your story is appearing on a location page or a hashtag page, which you can see at the top of the view counter. To hide it from appearing here, simply tap the X to the right of the location or hashtag page.

Finally, if you prefer to share certain stories with a smaller group of people, you should consider using Instagram’s Close Friends feature, which allows you to share stories only to a group of followers you’ve chosen.

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