You Can Keep Tabs On Your Instagram Close Friends List To Share Stories With Your Faves
It seems like posting photos and videos from your life has become standard practice. As you accrue more followers and share more and more of your world, it makes sense to limit who gets a glimpse into that world. Enter Instagram's Close Friends list, a feature that allows Instagram users to choose who gets to see their Stories. If you're not sure whether you're using this feature, you might be wondering how to find your Close Friends list on Instagram. Well worry not because in just a few steps you can locate, add, and remove people from your Instagram Close Friends list.
Instagram's Close Friends feature began rolling out on Nov. 30, 2018, per an Instagram blog post as a way to let users choose to share certain moments with certain people. Even though it's not a super new feature, you might still have some questions about how it all works.
First, to find people on your Close Friends list, log into your Instagram account and tap your profile picture on the bottom right side of the navigation bar, just to the right of the heart, to get to your main feed. From there, tap the three parallel lines on the top right hand corner, directly to the left of your username and navigate to "Close Friends." From there, you'll have two options — to view "Your List" or to see "Suggestions" for some of the top people Instagram thinks should be on your list. The "Your List" tab should also feature a number in grey for how many people are in your Close Friends circle. From that tab, you can tap "Remove" to get people off the list. From the "Suggestions" tab you can tap "Add" for people you want to let in. It's that easy!
The Close Friends feature is great for people who want to limit the kind of content some of their followers see, but it's not mandatory to use. Insta users are not obligated to add anyone to the list, and if you're comfortable with everyone seeing everything you post, there's no need. But I've found that the feature is great for sharing personal details with close friends or family, posting thoughts that have to do with inside jokes, or being a little sillier than I usually would for my at-large Insta community. It's a good way to make your account a little more personal and share details that are a little more intimate.
If you're more interested in hiding certain Stories from certain people as opposed to sharing a specific kind of content with a group, Instagram lets you do that too. To hide your Story from someone, tap the same three parallel lines on the top right hand corner that you tapped to access your Close Friends list, tap the circular settings button, and then navigate to Privacy and Security > Story Controls > Hide Story From. From there you can select people who you'd rather not watch your Story, like your boss, your parents, your siblings, or an arch nemesis. The Close Friends feature is better if you have a small list of people you want to expose to specific content, whereas hiding your Stories from someone altogether is a good option if you don't want them to see anything at all.
The Close Friends list is a great way to curate your Insta experience with your friends a bit more, and figuring out who to put on it is the first step in the journey. Happy posting!
