# How to Hide Posts on Facebook

> Choose who can see your Facebook profile post, exclude selected friends when available, archive your own post, or hide someone else's posts from your Feed.

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- Language: en
- Published: 2024-10-17T14:56:04+00:00
- Updated: 2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

“Hide a post” can mean several different things on Facebook. You might want one friend not to see **your** next update, want an older update off your profile, or want fewer posts from **someone else** in your Feed. These require different controls. Choose the goal first, then check the audience or status of the post after you act.

This guide covers ordinary posts on a personal profile. A Page post, group post, Reel, and Story may have different audience settings. Do not rely on a personal-profile privacy instruction to change a public group post or a Story.

## Hide your new post from a particular Facebook friend

Start creating the post on your personal profile. Before publishing, open the **audience selector** shown near your name or in the composer. Meta documents this selector as the place to choose who can see a profile post. The menu may show options such as Public, Friends, or Only me; review the options actually displayed for your account. ([Facebook Help](https://www.facebook.com/help/170116376402147))

If **Friends except** or a comparable exclusion choice appears, select the friend or friends to exclude. Check the displayed audience summary before you publish. After posting, reopen the post's audience indicator to confirm it still matches your intent. This is a setting for a particular post, not a promise to change every older or future post. The interface may remember a recent selection, so make a habit of checking the audience each time.

If the option to exclude specific people is missing, do not assume the post will be hidden from them. Choose an available audience that meets your goal, or hold the post until you can confirm the intended audience. **Only me** hides it from everyone else rather than a selected friend. A custom list, when offered, can give you a smaller included audience; inspect exactly who is on it before sharing.

Avoid treating the selector as a secrecy guarantee. People who can see a post may describe it, capture it, or share information from it elsewhere. Tagging can also change visibility in ways that are easy to miss: Meta says a tagged person's friends may be added to a post's audience in some circumstances. Check tags and the final audience if a particular person's access matters. ([Facebook Help](https://www.facebook.com/help/124970597582337/r.php/)) For information that must remain confidential, a Facebook post is a poor place to put it.

## Change who can see a post you already shared

Find the post on your profile and look for its audience indicator or post menu. Meta says you can inspect the audience on a shared post and change it afterward. ([Facebook Help](https://www.facebook.com/help/120939471321735?locale=pl_PL)) Select the narrower audience available for that post, then return to it and verify the displayed setting. For a post that should be visible only to you, **Only me** is more precise than guessing whether removing it from one profile surface changes who can see it elsewhere.

Changing visibility now does not erase any view, notification, screenshot, or resharing that happened while the post was more widely visible. If a post includes another person, consider whether the audience change is enough for your purpose. If it is not, use the post's available removal control and verify its status.

## Archive your own post, or move it to Trash

**Archive** and **Trash** serve different purposes. Archive is for a post you want to stop showing others while keeping it available to yourself. Trash is for a post you intend to remove. Meta says posts moved to Trash remain there for 30 days before deletion unless you restore or delete them sooner. It does **not** say archived posts disappear after 30 days. ([Meta, Manage Activity](https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/introducing-manage-activity/))

Open the post's menu or the relevant section of Activity Log and inspect the options available for that post. Choose Archive if you want to retain it privately. Choose Trash only if you intend deletion. Then check the appropriate Archive or Trash view in Activity Log rather than assuming the action succeeded. The exact menu position can vary between the app and website, and some post types may offer different options.

If you want to retrieve an archived post later, look in Activity Log's archived content area. If you put it in Trash by mistake, review the Trash before the 30-day window ends. Do not use the 30-day period as a storage method: it is a deletion delay, not the Archive retention period.

## Hide someone else's post from your Feed

If your goal is to stop **seeing** a person's posts, changing the audience of your own posts will not help. Open a post from that person in your Feed and inspect its menu for a hide or “see fewer” option. Meta says a viewer can hide a single Feed story or ask to see fewer posts from a person, Page, or group. An **Unfollow** choice can stop that person's or Page's posts appearing in your Feed. ([Facebook Help](https://www.facebook.com/help/1913802218945435/))

This affects your Feed experience. It does not delete the original post, change the author's audience, or block them from seeing your posts. If your concern is what **they** can see from your profile, return to the audience selector on your own posts. If your concern is a harmful or rule-breaking post, use Facebook's report control rather than treating Hide as a report.

## Decide which control matches your goal

| Your goal | Control to inspect |
| --- | --- |
| Let most friends see a new profile post except selected people | Audience selector, then an exclusion option if offered. |
| Keep an existing profile post for yourself only | Change its audience to Only me, if offered for that post. |
| Remove your own post from others' view but retain it privately | Archive. |
| Delete your own post | Trash or delete, after checking the prompt. |
| See fewer posts from someone else | Hide, see fewer, or Unfollow in your Feed. |

Before finishing, return to the post or Activity Log and check the result. The words on a menu are less useful than the actual audience and location shown after you save. For sensitive content, confirm from another appropriate view where possible, and avoid adding details that should not be shared at all.

## Quick answers

**Will Facebook tell a friend I excluded them from my post?** This draft does not rely on an unverified notification promise. Check the audience shown on the post, but remember a person who can see it may still discuss or capture it.

**Does Archive delete a Facebook post after 30 days?** No. Meta describes Archive as keeping a post for yourself. The 30-day deletion period applies to posts moved to Trash. ([Meta](https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/introducing-manage-activity/))

**Does hiding someone's Feed post stop them seeing mine?** No. Feed controls change what you see. Use the audience selector on your own post to manage who can see it. ([Facebook Help](https://www.facebook.com/help/1913802218945435/))