On Twitter, people halfway across the world can become friends, and complete strangers can take an interest in each other’s content. But not everyone is comfortable being so public – and that’s okay.
Some users prefer to keep their information close with comfortable privacy settings. Fortunately, most social media platforms understand and respect this – including Twitter. One way to get more privacy on Twitter is to hide your likes. You may want to keep your colleagues from seeing your affinity for cat memes or your friends from spotting an embarrassing interest. Whatever your reasons, we can help.
While you can’t make Twitter likes private from everyone, you can hide your likes on Twitter using a couple of easy workarounds. Read on to learn how to hide likes on Twitter, increase the overall privacy of your account and remove existing likes.
Who can see your Twitter likes?
If you’re considering hiding likes on Twitter, it only makes sense to know who you would be hiding them from.
The people who can see your Twitter likes depend on your account type. Followers and non-followers can view liked posts on a public account under the profile’s “Likes” tab. If you have a private account, only followers can access that tab. Users also receive notifications when private and public account holders like one of their Tweets or a Tweet they’re tagged in.
How to hide Twitter likes
On most social media platforms, likes go under the radar. For example, there’s no “Likes” tab on Instagram, so someone who wants to see the posts you dig would have to do some digging themselves. Twitter, on the other hand, places this information front and center.
If you find Twitter’s like-sharing policy a bit too public, you can take the following measures to prevent others from finding seeing this information:
- Make your account private: Only followers can see likes from private Twitter accounts, so this setting hides your favorite Tweets from the public. Of course, making your account private comes with some trade-offs: your Tweets are only visible to your audience, and you have to approve follow requests manually. Here’s how to change privacy and safety settings on Twitter to make your account private:
- Log in to your Twitter account on mobile or desktop.
- Navigate to your profile by clicking on the profile icon.
- Locate “Settings” and select “Privacy and safety” from the subsequent menu.
- Under “Your Twitter activity,” select “Audience and tagging.”
- Turn on the “Protect your Tweets” toggle.
- Take likes back: Even with a private account, followers can still view your likes. The only way to truly “hide” your likes is to take them back. Under the “Likes” tab, scroll through your liked Tweets. When you locate a like you don’t want others to see, double-tap or click the heart icon to unlike.
How to hide others’ likes from my feed
Your “For you” feed isn’t just content from people you follow. It also contains Twitter likes from people in your social media circles.
If you want to prevent Twitter’s algorithm from showing you others’ liked Tweets on a particular topic, you can mute specific keywords. For example, if your friends are football fanatics but sports aren’t your thing, you can prevent athletic content from making it into your feed by blocking related terms. Here’s a step-by-step guide:
- Open the Twitter mobile app and log in to your account.
- Tap on your profile photo in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.
- Select “Settings and support,” then “Settings and privacy.”
- Select the “Privacy and safety tab.”
- Tap on “Mute and block.”
- Tap on “Muted words” and add phrases you would prefer to avoid seeing in your Twitter feed. This feature is case-sensitive, so use upper- and lower-case letters as needed.
If you want to remove all information from a specific account from your feed, you can also do so under “Mute and block.” Instead of choosing “Muted words,” select “Muted accounts” and add the handles of users’ whose Tweets you no longer wish to see. Muting is not the same as blocking – you won’t prevent these users from interacting with you, but you’ll keep their content out of your feed.
If you wish to block a user, navigate to their profile and tap the three dots in the top right-hand corner. From the pop-up menu, select “Block” and confirm your choice.
