How-To

How to Block Someone From Seeing Your Story on Instagram

By Adam Davidson

Updated November 30, 2023

Want to make your Instagram Story more exclusive? Here’s how to block someone from seeing your Story on Instagram.

Instagram Stories are a great way to share what’s happening in your life right now you’re your followers. You can create a mix of photos and videos that get pinned to the top of your profile. Your profile ring even changes to let your followers know that you’ve posted a Story. After 24 hours, the Story automatically disappears, and you can start all over again.

Sometimes, however, you may want to post an Instagram Story that isn’t really appropriate for all of your followers. There might be a specific follower, or multiple followers, who you would prefer wasn’t able to see your Story at all.

The good news is that it’s possible to restrict access to your Instagram Stories for specific accounts. That way, your Stories aren’t visible to those users at all. Here’s how to block someone from seeing your Story on Instagram.

How to Block Someone From Your Instagram Stories in Settings

You can block specific users from seeing your Instagram Stories through the Instagram app settings. When you block someone from your Stories, they won’t see any Stories that you post. The setting will remain that way until you remove them from your blocked list.

1. Open Instagram and tap your Profile icon at the bottom-right of the screen.
   
2. Tap the Menu icon in the top-right of the screen.
   
3. Select Settings and privacy.
   
4. Scroll down and tap Hide story and live.
   
5. Tap Hide story and live from.
   
6. Select the accounts that you want to block from seeing your Stories.
   
7. When you’ve selected all the accounts you want to block, tap Done in the top right corner.
8. The selected accounts will no longer be able to see your Instagram Stories.
9. If you want to unblock anyone at any point, repeat steps 1–5. This time, deselect the account that you want to unblock.

How to Block Someone From Your Instagram Stories in Their Profile

You can also block specific accounts from seeing your Instagram Stories directly from within their profiles on Instagram. This method is useful if you want to quickly block a single account rather than multiple accounts at once, and is far less drastic than having to remove Instagram followers completely.

1. Open Instagram and navigate to the profile of someone that you want to block from your Stories.
2. Tap the Three Dots icon in the top right of their profile.
   
3. Select Hide your story to block the account from seeing your Instagram Stories.
   
4. To allow an account to see your Stories again, repeat steps 1 and 2, and tap Unhide Your Story.
   

Can You Hide an Instagram Story From One Person?

You can hide your Instagram Story from as many or as few people as you would like. If you want to block a single person, you can use either method listed above, and only that one account will be unable to see your Instagram Stories. If you want to block multiple accounts, the first method is the quickest way to go, as it allows you to block multiple accounts at once. You don’t have to stick to the same accounts either; you can choose to change which accounts can see your Instagram Stories whenever you wish.

How Do You Tell if Someone Has Hidden Their Instagram Story From You?

If you’re worried that the person you’re blocking from your Instagram Stories will find out and be offended, the good news is that there’s no direct way to find out if someone is blocking you from seeing their Instagram Stories.

However, there are a few workarounds. If someone believes you have blocked them, they can try signing into someone else’s account and seeing if your Stories are visible to that person. This will only work if the account that you borrow is someone who follows you and that you haven’t already blocked. If you do use a different account, you may want to remove their account from your phone afterward to stop you from accidentally signing back into it again.

The person you’ve blocked may also be able to guess that they’ve been blocked if you normally post a lot of Instagram Stories and suddenly they’re no longer seeing any. In this case, you might want to consider gradually restricting them from more and more Stories, so that it doesn’t appear quite so obvious.

Why Would You Want to Hide Your Instagram Stories?

There are several reasons why you might want to hide your Instagram Stories from other accounts. The content of your Stories may be inappropriate for certain audiences. For example, if your boss is following your account, an Instagram Story about how hard it was being at work all day with a massive hangover might not be something you would want them to see. You may also have family members who follow your account, and you may prefer that Grandpa doesn’t see all the details of your dating life.

It may simply be the case that your Instagram Story will only really make sense to, or be relevant to, a specific group of people, so you might prefer to limit your Story to just those people. Whatever your reasons, blocking someone from seeing your Story is simple to do.

Go Deeper into Instagram

Learning how to block someone from seeing your Story on Instagram allows you to determine who can and can’t see your content so that you can limit it to just the audience that you want. Not all of your Instagram Stories may be appropriate for all of your followers, so being able to block certain accounts can help you keep control of who sees what.

Instagram is packed with useful features like this, and with new features being added all the time, such as location tags in Instagram Notes, it can be easy to be completely unaware of some of the best features. Sign up for our newsletter to keep up with all the latest how-to tips, tech news, and reviews.