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How to hide your friends list on your Facebook profile
Published onFebruary 10, 2025
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 loan money. In this guide, we’ll focus on showing how to hide your friends list on Facebook.
QUICK ANSWER
To hide your Facebook friends list, open Facebook.com on your browser of choice and sign in. Click on your profile icon, 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. You can also choose Friends, if you think that's safe enough.
JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS
How to hide your Facebook friends list (desktop)
For desktop users, follow these steps.
- Using your browser of choice, go to Facebook.com.
- Click on your profile icon, in the top-right corner.
- Select Settings & privacy.
- Pick Settings.
- On the left panel, scroll down to the Audience and visibility section. Click on How people find and contact you.
- Click on the Who can see your friends list? option.
- For maximum privacy, select Only me. You can also select Friends, Specific friends, or Close friends, if you feel those are safe enough.
- When done, hit Save.
How to hide your Facebook friends list (mobile)
You can also access this option on your smartphone.
- Start by tapping the Menu icon (represented by three horizontal lines). On Android, it’s in the top-right corner, and on iPhone, it’s in the lower-right corner.
- Scroll down and tap on Settings & Privacy, then select Settings.
- In the Audience and Visibility section, select How People Find and Contact You.
- Next, select Who can see your friends list?.
- For maximum privacy, select Only me. You can also select Friends, Specific friends, or Close friends, if you feel those are safe enough.
- When done, hit Save.
How to check what your profile looks like to others
If you want to ensure the change of settings worked, you can preview how your profile will look when others access it. Here’s how!
- Go to your profile.
- Click on the three-dot menu button.
- 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, as long as that friend hasn’t hidden it as well.
There is no direct way to tell if someone has hidden their friends list from you on Facebook. Still, 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 from you, specifically.
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 icon > 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.