# How to View Your Facebook Profile as Public > Use Facebook’s View As option to preview your public profile. Learn what the preview shows, what it misses, and which privacy settings to review. - Canonical HTML: [https://www.followersflys.com/blog/how-to-view-facebook-profile-as-public](https://www.followersflys.com/blog/how-to-view-facebook-profile-as-public) - Language: en - Published: 2024-09-12T09:43:39+00:00 - Updated: 2026-10-02T00:00:00+00:00 Facebook’s **View As** option shows a preview of your personal profile from the perspective of someone who is not your Facebook friend. Open your own profile, choose its options menu, and select **View As**. Check the posts, photos, and details displayed there. If something should have a smaller audience, leave the preview and change the audience or profile setting that controls that item. The preview is useful, but it has a defined scope: it shows the **public view of your profile**. It does not promise to show every place a post can appear, what a particular friend sees, or everything another person may have saved elsewhere. Use it as one check within a broader review of your Facebook privacy settings. ## Open the public view of your own profile On a computer, sign in to Facebook and go to your personal profile by selecting your profile picture, then your name. Look beneath your name for the profile options control, often displayed as three dots. Choose **View As**. Facebook’s [View As help page](https://www.facebook.com/help/288066747875915) describes this as the way to inspect how your profile looks to people who are not your friends. When you finish, use **Exit View As** in the preview banner to return to your regular profile. In the Facebook app, start at your own profile and look for the options menu near the profile header. Select **View As** if it appears. Menu positions can differ by device, app version, and profile type, so follow the label rather than a fixed bottom-right or top-right tap sequence. If you are viewing a Page or a different profile instead of your personal profile, return to your own profile before looking for the option. Do not mistake the preview for an editing screen. Its purpose is to **show** the public-facing profile. When you find an item to change, leave View As and open that item’s audience control or the appropriate privacy setting. Then return to View As to check the result. This two-pass approach avoids assuming that merely entering the preview has changed anything. ## What should you look at in the preview? Start with the details most likely to matter to you: the introduction under your name, your current profile and cover pictures, recent public posts, visible photos, your Friends section, and any other profile sections that appear. The question is not whether every section exists; it is whether the information shown matches what you intended to share beyond your friends. Your current **profile picture and cover photo are public**, according to [Facebook’s photo visibility help](https://www.facebook.com/help/193629617349922/). That remains true even when many of your posts are limited to friends. If the current image itself reveals something you do not want broadly visible, consider changing the image; an audience change on an unrelated post will not make the current profile image private. Older profile or cover photos can have their own audience settings, so review a specific older photo if it concerns you. Next, scan the posts that appear. A post shared with **Public** is intended for a wider audience than a Friends-only post. If an old post surprises you in View As, open it in your normal profile and inspect its audience selector. Facebook says you can select an audience when sharing, and its [privacy settings guidance](https://www.facebook.com/help/193677450678703/) identifies **Posts** under **Audience and visibility**. Check both the individual post and any default setting you rely on for future posts. Do not assume one change has revised every earlier post. Look at the About and contact details as separate items. A public preview may show a field you forgot you added, such as a workplace, city, or contact method. Facebook’s [privacy troubleshooting page](https://www.facebook.com/help/411239642246274/) says contact information can have an audience selector in **About → Contact and Basic Info**. Review each detail you care about in its own control, because visibility is not necessarily governed by a single profile-wide switch. The Friends section deserves its own check. Facebook’s [friends-list help](https://www.facebook.com/help/115450405225661) describes a setting for who can see the list **on your profile**. It also warns that your friends control visibility on their own profiles, and people may still see mutual connections. If the public preview shows more of your friends list than you intend, inspect **How people find and contact you → Who can see your friends list?** in Settings. Hiding your own list on your profile does not remove all traces of friendships from the service. ## What View As cannot confirm View As is the **non-friend public preview**. It is not a simulation of a named friend with a particular audience relationship. For example, a post shared with a custom group might be visible to some friends and not others. The public preview alone cannot tell you which of those friends can open it. For that question, inspect the post’s own audience setting and any relevant custom selection rather than inferring from a blank public view. It also does not cover every location where your content may be encountered. Facebook’s [View As help](https://www.facebook.com/help/288066747875915) warns that posts and photos hidden from your profile can remain visible elsewhere on Facebook to the audience they were shared with, including Feed and search. Hiding something from the profile layout and restricting its audience are different actions. If a post must no longer be available to its original audience, check the post’s sharing control or remove it as appropriate; simply checking the public profile is insufficient. Tags and other people’s posts add another limit. A photo that someone else uploaded, a tagged post, or a friendship shown from another person’s profile can follow that person’s settings. Your own public preview is a sensible starting point, but it does not give you control over another person’s copy of a post or every place a tag might appear. Review **Profile and tagging** in your settings when tagged content is the concern, and inspect the original post where possible. Search results are also separate from the profile preview. Facebook’s [privacy troubleshooting guidance](https://www.facebook.com/help/411239642246274/) describes a setting for whether outside search engines may link to your profile, while noting that previously indexed or cached information may persist until a search engine updates. A clean View As screen is not proof that an old search snippet or a screenshot taken elsewhere has disappeared. ## Change a setting, then check again If you find a public detail you did not expect, identify what type of information it is before changing anything. For a **post**, open that post and review its audience. For **About or contact information**, open the relevant field and its audience selector. For the **Friends section**, use the friends-list visibility setting. For a **tagged post**, review the post and the profile-and-tagging controls. For your **current profile or cover picture**, choose an image you are comfortable making public. Facebook groups these controls under **Settings & privacy → Settings → Audience and visibility**. Its help lists areas for posts, stories, followers and public content, profile and tagging, and how people find and contact you. The labels you see can vary by profile type, so search within Settings if the exact path differs. [Privacy Checkup](https://www.facebook.com/help/193677450678703/) is another way to walk through several of these choices, but a walkthrough does not replace checking the specific post or detail that raised the question. After saving a change, return to View As and inspect the same part of your profile. If it still appears, check whether you edited the intended post or field and whether another public copy exists. Be patient with a temporary display delay, but do not declare the item private from the absence of one preview tile. The controlling audience setting and the place where the content was shared matter more than a single visual check. ## Quick answers **Can I see my profile as one specific friend?** Facebook’s current View As help documents the public view for people who are not friends. It does not establish a dependable named-friend preview. Use each post’s audience selector to check what you shared with friends or a custom group. **Does View As change who can see my posts?** No. It is a preview. Leave it and edit the post audience or relevant setting, then preview again. **Why is my profile picture still visible?** Facebook treats the current profile and cover pictures as public. Choose an image appropriate for that visibility; review older photos separately. **Does hiding a post from my profile hide it everywhere?** No. Facebook says profile-hidden posts and photos can still appear elsewhere to their sharing audience. Review or change that item’s audience if broader visibility is the issue. **Does a private friends list hide every friendship?** No. Your setting controls the Friends section on your profile. Friends can show connections through their own settings, and mutual friends may still be visible. View As gives you a useful answer to one question: **what does the public-facing part of my own Facebook profile show right now?** Check it, change the settings behind anything unexpected, and repeat the preview. For sensitive details, also inspect individual audiences, tags, and search visibility rather than relying on the preview as a complete privacy guarantee.