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How to hide your friends list on your Facebook profile
Social media platforms encourage everyone to share their lives online, but some sharing can be risky. One common scam involves scammers looking at your Facebook friends list and attempting to create a cloned Facebook account. They then message your friends, pretending to be you, and ask them to send money. To safeguard your privacy, consider making specific parts of your Facebook profile private. If you’re also interested in making your entire profile private, we have a separate article available. In this guide, we’ll focus on showing how to hide your friends list on Facebook.
QUICK ANSWER
To hide your Facebook friends list, go to your profile, then navigate to Settings & Privacy > Settings. Select How people can find and contact you, then find the section Who can see your friends list? in the left pane. Adjust the settings from Public to Only me.
JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS
How to hide your Facebook friends list (desktop)
For desktop users, follow these steps:
- Go to your profile –> Settings & privacy –> Settings
- This is where you can control privacy settings for photos, posts, and more, including your friends list.
- Scroll down to the How people can find and contact you section, look for the option labeled Who can see your friends list?
- Click the drop-down menu to access friends list privacy settings. To hide your list from everyone, choose Only me.
- If you wish to be more specific about who can view your friends list, you have the choices of Friends, Specific friends, Friends except…, Custom or Close friends. Just note that if you go with Public, your friends list becomes visible to all users.
How to hide your Facebook friends list (mobile)
- Start by tapping the menu icon at the bottom (represented by three horizontal lines).
- Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy, then select Settings.
- In the Audience and Visibility section, select How People Find and Contact You.
- Next, tap the blue box next to Who can see your friends list?.
- Now, choose your desired privacy level for your friends list (select Only me if you want to hide it from everyone).
How to check what your profile looks like to others
- Go to your profile and click the three dots (…) icon.
- Click View as in the menu.
Now, Facebook will show you what your profile looks like to someone who doesn’t meet your privacy settings. If the friends list is now gone, it has worked.
Bear in mind that this setting is not foolproof. For example, if you share something and tag a friend, it will appear on their timeline along with your name. So, any determined person can make connections between you and other people by searching for you on Facebook and browsing other people’s timelines. However, this is significantly more challenging and time-consuming than simply looking at your friends list on your own page.
FAQs
Yes, you can still see your friend list even when you hide it from others.
There is no direct way to tell if someone has hidden their friends list from you on Facebook, but there are some signs to look for: if you used to see their friends list but can’t anymore, if you can’t find their friends when searching, or if a mutual friend can see the list while you can’t, they likely have hidden it.
If you don’t want your Facebook profile to appear in the suggested friends lists of others after they’ve added your phone number to their contacts, click on your profile picture > Settings & Privacy > Settings. Select How people can find and contact you, and adjust the settings in the Who can Facebook suggest your profile to section.