How to lock your Facebook profile (and what to do if you can’t)

What locking your profile does

Profile lock is a shortcut that turns on several privacy settings at once. When it works, people who are not your friends:

• Cannot see your posts or photos on your profile, including old ones.
• Cannot see your full size profile picture or cover photo, or open them.
• See a small lock badge and a note that your profile is locked.
• Cannot see stories you post.

It does not hide everything. Your name, profile picture thumbnail and cover photo still appear. Posts you share in public groups or on other people's timelines follow those places' rules. And friends still see everything they did before.

How to lock your Facebook profile on a computer

On facebook.com, click your name to open your profile. Click the ••• button under your cover photo. If you see Lock profile, click it and confirm. If you do not see it, the option is not offered for your account, and the settings below do the same job. On iPhone and Android the option sits in the same ••• menu on your profile.

Why the Lock profile option is missing

Facebook introduced profile lock for countries where privacy and safety concerns were high, such as India, and it is not offered everywhere. Many readers in the United States do not see it. It also disappears when your profile has professional mode on, for Pages, and sometimes for accounts managed through Meta Accounts Center in certain regions. There is no hidden setting to turn it on. Updating the app will not add it if Facebook has not enabled it for you.

Do it manually: the full privacy checklist

These settings give you nearly everything profile lock does. Open Menu › Settings & privacy › Settings. Facebook moves these around, so if a name differs, use the search bar at the top of Settings.

1. Posts: under Audience and visibility › Posts, set Who can see your future posts to Friends.
2. Old posts: on the same screen tap Limit who can see past posts. This changes every old public post to Friends in one step. You cannot undo it in bulk.
3. Profile details: go to your profile, tap Edit profile or About, and set your workplace, school, hometown, relationship and contact info to Friends or Only me.
4. Friends list: under How people find and contact you, set Who can see your friends list to Friends or Only me.
5. Photos and albums: open each album on your profile and set its audience to Friends. Profile pictures and cover photos albums have limited options.
6. Stories: in story settings, set the audience to Friends.

Protect your profile picture

Your current profile picture is always public in small size. You cannot hide it, but you can choose one that does not show your face clearly, or one that shows nothing personal. Older profile pictures can be set to Friends or Only me one by one: open the photo, tap ••• and choose Edit audience.

Control tags and timeline posts

Friends can tag you in public posts, which shows you to their audience. Under Settings › Audience and visibility › Profile and tagging, turn on Review tags people add to your posts and Review posts you are tagged in before they appear on your profile. Also set who can post on your profile to Friends or Only me.

Stop strangers finding or messaging you

• Who can send you friend requests: Friends of friends.
• Who can look you up using your email or phone number: Friends or Only me.
• Do you want search engines outside of Facebook to link to your profile: Off.
• Message requests from people you do not know go to a separate folder. In Messenger privacy settings, you can send them to spam or turn them off.

Check what strangers see

Go to your profile, tap the ••• button and choose View as. Facebook shows your profile as the public sees it. Scroll through and look for anything you did not mean to share, like a check in, a public comment or an old photo. Fix those one by one with Edit audience.

How to unlock your profile

If you used Lock profile, open your profile, tap •••, then Unlock profile. Your earlier settings do not all come back on their own, so check the audience of your future posts afterward. If you used the manual steps, change each setting back.

Locking your profile and account safety

Privacy settings hide your content but do not protect your login. If someone gets your password, they can undo every setting. Turn on two factor authentication in Accounts Center › Password and security. If you are locking your profile because someone is harassing you, block them as well and report them. Blocking stops them seeing your profile at all, even while you remain friends with people they know. If you keep getting signed out unexpectedly, see why Facebook keeps logging you out.

Is a locked profile worth it?

For most people, yes. Scammers and fake account makers copy public photos and friend lists to target your contacts. Fewer public details means less for them to use. The trade off is that new friends and old classmates may struggle to recognize you, so a clear but non personal profile picture and your real name help.

Lock down Facebook on iPhone and Android

The privacy settings live in the same place in both apps. On iPhone, tap Menu at the bottom right. On Android, tap the menu or your profile picture at the top right. Then tap the gear icon for Settings & privacy. Facebook also has a Privacy Checkup tool near the top of Settings that walks you through who can see what, how people find you, and your security settings. It covers most of the manual checklist in a few screens, so it is a good place to start.

Hide your profile from search

You cannot disappear from Facebook search completely. Anyone can type your name and see your profile in the results. What you can control is how much they see after tapping it, and whether they can find you by your phone number or email. Turning off search engine linking also stops Google from showing your profile in results over time, though it can take a while for old results to drop.

Friends of friends: a middle ground

If Friends feels too strict, many settings offer Friends of friends. This lets people you share friends with see more, which helps with real world connections like a new coworker. It also widens your audience a lot, since a few hundred friends can mean tens of thousands of friends of friends. For posts and photos, Friends is the safer choice.

Instagram and Messenger are separate

Locking or tightening Facebook does not change your Instagram account. If your accounts are linked in Accounts Center, posts shared from Instagram to Facebook follow Facebook's audience setting for that post, but your Instagram profile stays public unless you switch it to private in the Instagram app. Messenger follows its own message request settings.

If you later decide you want a clean start, you can change how your name shows on Facebook, or leave entirely. See how to change your name on Facebook for the first option.