How to hide your following list on Instagram

Your Instagram following list says more about you than you think.

It shows who you're watching, what niches you're interested in, which competitors you're studying, what trends you're tracking.

Your entire research process is public for anyone to see.

And people are looking….

Competitors check who you follow to find collaboration opportunities before you do.

Brands check your follows to see if you're authentic or buying engagement.

Other creators use your following list as their own personal recommendation engine.

You're basically giving away your playbook for free. Do you understand this?

In this guide, I'll show you exactly how to hide your following list on Instagram in less than 30 seconds. Then I'll explain why more creators are doing this in 2025-2026, and when you should (or shouldn't) make your follows private.

Let's start with the how, then we'll get into the why.

How to hide your following list (the actual steps)

Instagram doesn't let you hide your following list directly. But you can make your entire account private, which hides your followers and following lists from people who don't follow you.

Here's how:

On iPhone or Android:

1. Open Instagram and tap your profile picture (bottom right)

2. Tap the three lines (top right) and select "Settings and privacy"

3. Tap "Account privacy"

4. Toggle on "Private account"

And that's it. Your following list is now hidden from anyone who doesn't follow you.

cc: Musefind for the image

Important: Making your account private also means:

• New people need to request to follow you (you approve manually)

• Your posts won't show up in hashtag or explore feeds

• Non-followers can't see your content at all

So this method works great if you're a personal account or if you only want followers you've approved. But if you're trying to grow and reach new people, making your entire account private kills your discoverability.

You can't have it both ways with Instagram's native features, either your account is public and your following list is visible, or your account is private and nobody can find you.

But there's a workaround most people don't know about, look…

The workaround for public accounts

If you want to keep your account public but hide who you follow, here's what smart creators do:

Create a private "research" account.

Use your main account for posting and growing, and use a separate private account for following competitors, tracking trends, and doing research.

How to do it:

1. Create a new Instagram account (use a different email)

2. Make it private immediately

3. Don't add a profile picture or bio (keep it anonymous)

4. Use this account to follow everyone you want to study

Now your main account only follows people you want publicly associated with your brand, friends, collaborators, accounts you genuinely support, and your research stays private on the secondary account.

This is what I do with Clyren research. My main account follows creators I collaborate with, but my research account follows hundreds of creators across different niches to spot trends and patterns.

Nobody needs to know who I'm studying.

Why creators are hiding their following lists

Reason 1: Competitive intelligence

Your following list is a roadmap of your strategy.

If you follow 50 AI tool companies, competitors know you're studying that space, if you suddenly start following a bunch of fitness creators, they know you're planning to pivot or collaborate.

I learned this the hard way. I was building an early version of Clyren and following every Instagram growth tool and trend analysis account I could find.

A competitor literally messaged me saying "I see you're researching trend tools, we should talk."

They were using my following list to identify potential competition before I even launched.

Now I do my research on a private account.

My main account only follows people I want publicly associated with my brand.

Reason 2: Prevents poaching

If you've built relationships with great creators, collaborators, or potential partners, your following list tells everyone exactly who they are.

Competitors can:

• Reach out to your collaborators before you close deals

• Offer better terms to creators you're about to work with

• Build relationships with accounts you've identified as high-value

Your following list is basically a curated list of "accounts worth paying attention to" and you're giving it away for free.

Reason 3: Protects your audience research

Let's say you're launching a product for Instagram coaches, and you start following 100 Instagram coaching accounts to study their content, understand their audience, see what's working.

If your following list is public, everyone can see exactly who you're targeting.

They can reverse-engineer your entire audience research in 10 seconds.

This matters more as you scale. When you're small, nobody's watching, but when you're growing, competitors pay attention to every move.

Reason 4: Avoids weird assumptions

People make judgments based on who you follow.

If you follow a controversial figure for research purposes, people assume you endorse them.

If you follow competitors, people think you're copying them, if you follow a lot of brands, people think you're chasing partnerships.

Sometimes you're just doing research, but your following list doesn't come with context.

Making your follows private eliminates these assumptions entirely.

When you should NOT hide your following list

Here are situations where keeping your following list public makes more sense:

You're building in public: If your brand is about transparency and showing your process, hiding your follows contradicts that message, some creators get engagement specifically because people can see who they're learning from.

You're networking actively: If you're trying to get noticed by bigger creators, following them publicly can be part of your strategy.

You want social proof: If you follow well-known people in your industry, that can add credibility. "Oh, they follow [big name], they must be legit" for sure.

You're just starting: When you have 200 followers, nobody's analyzing your following list, so don't overthink it until you're at a size where competitors actually care, okay?

You collaborate a lot: If partnerships are core to your strategy, publicly following collaborators before you work together can build anticipation and show you're well-connected.

Don't leave your following list public by default, you must decide based on your actual strategy.

What to do instead of hiding everything

If you want to keep your account public but still protect some of your research, here's a balanced approach:

Curate your main account follows:

• Only follow accounts you want publicly associated with your brand

• Follow collaborators, friends, and creators you genuinely support

• Unfollow anyone you're just studying or researching

Use a research account for:

• Competitors you're analyzing

• Trends you're tracking across niches

• Accounts you're studying for content ideas

• Anyone you don't want in your public following list

Use Clyren for trend research instead: Honestly, this is why we built Clyren's trend scanner in the first place.

Instead of following hundreds of accounts to spot trends, the tool does it for you, and you get the insights without leaving a public paper trail of who you're watching.

You can analyze any creator's content without following them, you can spot trends across entire niches without following a single account.

Your competitive research stays completely private in this case.

The bigger picture on Instagram privacy

You can be strategic about what you show and what you keep to yourself.

Your posts? Public. That's how you grow.

Your stories? Maybe close friends only for some of them.

Your following list? Probably should be more intentional than it currently is.

Your DMs? Obviously private.

Your research process? Definitely private.

Make your content public. Keep your research private with Clyren.

It's really that simple.

Just some quick action steps

If you're reading this and thinking "yeah, I should probably fix this," here's what to do today:

Step 1: Review your current following list and ask yourself: "Does this accurately represent my brand, or is it full of research accounts?"

Step 2: If it's mostly research, create a private secondary account and move that research there.

Step 3: Unfollow accounts on your main that you're only studying, keep follows that add value to your public brand.

Step 4: Going forward, be intentional about every follow on your main account.

Ask: "Do I want this publicly associated with my brand?"

Step 5: Use tools like Clyren for trend research so you don't need to follow accounts just to study them.

This takes maybe 10 minutes to set up properly, but it protects months or years of research and strategy.

The idea

Your Instagram following list is more revealing than you think.

It shows your interests, your research, your strategy, your next moves. And it's public by default.

Most creators never think about this until a competitor uses their following list against them.

Don't be most creators, please.

Either make your account private (if you don't care about growth at all), create a research account (if you want to stay public), or use tools that let you research without following.

Your content should be public, but your strategy.

Now go audit your following list before your competitors do it for you.

Want more Instagram strategy? Check out how to see who shared your Instagram post and our guide on how to grow Instagram followers using trends.

In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. Use Clyren 🫶