To hide your friends list on Facebook, go to Settings & privacy → Settings → Audience and visibility → How people find and contact you, open Who can see your friends list? and pick Only me. As of August 2026 the path is the same in the iPhone app, the Android app and on facebook.com. The main limit to know before you start: Facebook's own help page says people "may see mutual friends when they visit your profile," so this hides the full list, not every individual friendship.
What hiding your friends list actually does
Facebook's Help Center is direct about the starting point: "By default, the Friends section of your profile is public, meaning everyone can see it." Public on Facebook is broad. The audience help page defines it as "anyone including people off of Facebook," so a public friends list can be read by someone who is not your friend and not logged in.
Changing the audience of the Friends section changes who can open that section on your profile and scroll the names. It does not unfriend anyone or delete anything, and Facebook's help page describes no notification for the change. Your friends still see you in their own lists, and they still control that side: "Your friends also control who can see their friendships on their own profiles." In other words, you are hiding your copy of the relationship, not theirs.
If you are doing this because a particular person keeps appearing on your profile or in your list, hiding the list is the light option. Unfriending or blocking is the heavy one, and blocking works differently in both directions; our guide on how to tell if someone blocked you on Facebook explains what a block actually removes.
In the app (iPhone and Android)
The iPhone and Android apps use the same menu path, and Facebook publishes the same steps for both.
- Open the Facebook app and tap Menu. Facebook's help page places it "in the top left of Facebook."
- Scroll down and tap Settings & privacy, then tap Settings.
- Scroll down to Audience and visibility and tap How people find and contact you.
- Tap Who can see your friends list?
- Choose the audience you want. Facebook's wording is "Select the audience of people (such as Friends) you'd like to have access to your friends list." To hide the list from everyone but yourself, choose Only me.
Choosing the audience is the last step; you can come back to the same screen to change it later.
On desktop (facebook.com)
On facebook.com the setting lives in the same place, reached through your profile picture instead of a Menu button. These are the steps from Facebook's help article "Adjust who can see your Friends section on Facebook":
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Select Settings & privacy, then click Settings.
- Scroll down to Audience and visibility and click How people find and contact you.
- Click Who can see your friends list?
- Select the audience you want, for example Friends or Only me.
If you cannot find Audience and visibility, make sure you opened plain Settings under Settings & privacy; Facebook's help pages put the section on that screen, in the left panel on desktop.
Only me, Friends, Public or Custom: which to choose
The friends-list setting is an audience dropdown. The definitions below are Facebook's own, from its general audience help page:
| Option | Facebook's definition | What it means for your friends list |
|---|---|---|
| Public | "anyone including people off of Facebook can see it" | The default. Anyone, logged in or not, can browse the list. |
| Friends | Shares with "your friends on Facebook" | Only people you are already friends with can open the list; non-friends cannot. |
| Only me | "visible only to you" | Nobody else can open the full list. Mutual friends can still surface (see below). |
| Custom | "selectively share something with specific people, or hide it from specific people" | Show the list to most friends but hide it from named people, or show it to a named few. |
Facebook's page on audience selection also lists Friends except and Specific friends alongside Custom, and describes them as ways to "include or exclude specific friends," the same job Custom does. The friends-list help page does not say which of these names appear in its dropdown, so if your options differ from the table, match them against Facebook's audience definitions rather than assuming a setting is missing.
For most people the practical choice is between Friends (keeps the list social but off-limits to strangers) and Only me (the closest thing to fully hidden).
What "Only me" still reveals
This is the part that is easy to miss. Facebook's help page states the limit in one sentence: "if you set your friends list to Only Me, only you'll be able to see your full friends list on your profile." The word doing the work is full. Three things stay visible after you hide the list:
- Mutual friends. "People may see mutual friends when they visit your profile." If someone shares friends with you, Facebook can show them that overlap even when the rest of your list is hidden. Facebook's help page lists no setting that removes this.
- Your friends' lists. Each friend controls their own Friends section. Facebook's wording: "if your friend has their friends list set to Public, anyone can see that you're friends." Your Only me setting does not reach into their profile, and the same page adds that a friendship visible on another profile can also be seen "in Feed, Search and other places on Facebook."
- Always-public profile information. Facebook's page on profile visibility says anyone can see your public information, which it describes as including "your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, username, user ID (account number), and networks." Hiding friends does not touch any of these.
Hiding the list changes only the Friends section of your profile. Facebook's View As page notes that posts and photos "are still visible to the audience they're shared with other places on Facebook," so a post or photo that shows you with a friend keeps whatever audience it was shared with. If you want a cleaner profile as well as a hidden list, our guide to deleting photos on Facebook covers removing and untagging old uploads.
The people and Pages you follow are a separate setting
Friends and follows are related but not the same thing. Facebook's help page on following says "You automatically follow people who you're friends with," and you can also follow Pages and "people who aren't your friend on Facebook but allow everybody to follow them." The list of accounts you follow has its own audience control, and hiding your friends list leaves it unchanged. To change it on desktop:
- Click your profile picture in the top right of Facebook.
- Click Settings and privacy, then click Settings.
- From the left panel, scroll down to Audience and visibility, then click Followers and public content.
- Next to Who can see the people and Pages you follow?, select the audience.
Facebook's help page does not state the default audience for this list, so check it rather than assuming it matches your friends-list choice. The same page notes a second limit: people you follow can see that you are following them, whatever audience you pick here. If you want both lists hidden, you need to set both.
Check how your profile looks to other people (View As)
View As is still available as of August 2026 and is the simplest way to confirm the change worked. Facebook's help page calls it "the public view of your Facebook profile," meaning what someone who is not your friend sees, which is the audience the friends-list setting is mostly about.
In the iPhone or Android app
- Tap Menu, then tap your name to open your profile.
- Tap Options, then select View As.
- Scroll to the Friends section and check whether it still lists names. With Only me set, a non-friend should not be able to open the list.
- To leave, tap Exit (iPhone, in the top left) or Exit View (Android).
On facebook.com
- Click your profile picture in the top right, then click your name to go to your profile.
- Click Options below your name and select View As.
- Check the Friends section, then click Exit View As in the banner when you are done.
Two caveats. Facebook documents View As as the public view only and does not document a way to preview what a specific friend sees, so it cannot confirm a Custom or Friends except audience. And it does not reflect what is visible elsewhere: "Posts and photos you've hidden on your profile are still visible to the audience they're shared with other places on Facebook, like Feed and search." The same applies to mutual friends: because View As is documented only as the public view, it cannot tell you which mutual friends a particular visitor will see.
Hiding the list on a Page vs. a profile
If you manage a Facebook Page and are looking for this setting there, it does not exist, because a Page has no friends list. Facebook's help page on the difference between Profiles, Pages and Groups describes Pages as places where businesses and public figures "can connect with their fans or customers," and says that "When someone likes or follows a Page on Facebook, they can start seeing updates from that Page in their Feed." Pages have followers, not friends.
As the Page owner you can see who follows you: switch to the Page, click the Page name in the left menu and open the Followers tab below the cover photo. Facebook notes you "may need to tap More to see it." The same page adds that "Because Page likes have been replaced by follows, you will no longer be able to see the people who like your Page, only follows." For what that change means for the two counts on a Page, see Facebook Page likes vs. followers. None of the Facebook help pages cited in this guide documents a setting to hide a Page's follower count from visitors, so treat that number as public. The controls Facebook does document for Pages include country and age restrictions, limits on who can comment on the Page's posts, and deactivating the Page "so that it's not visible to the public."
One related setting nearby
While you are in How people find and contact you, look at Who can send you friend requests? Facebook offers Everyone or Friends of Friends. If the reason you are hiding your list is unwanted requests from strangers, this setting addresses the cause rather than the symptom.
For more settings walkthroughs on the platform, see our guides on pinning a post on Facebook and clearing the Facebook cache, or the full Facebook guides hub.
Summary
| Task | Where it lives (as of August 2026) |
|---|---|
| Hide your friends list | Settings & privacy → Settings → Audience and visibility → How people find and contact you → Who can see your friends list? |
| Hide the accounts you follow | Same path → Followers and public content → Who can see the people and Pages you follow? |
| Limit friend requests | How people find and contact you → Who can send you friend requests? |
| Check the result | Your profile → Options → View As |
| Still visible after Only me | Mutual friends, your name in friends' own lists, always-public profile fields |