How to Lock Your Facebook Profile
Profile lock is the strongest privacy setting Facebook has. Paste your own profile link below first to see what a stranger can open today, then follow the steps to close it.
Available Options
Also try: How to Hide Your Facebook Friends List, See Your Facebook Profile as a Stranger (View As), Who Can See My Facebook Photos?
Profile lock is one switch that changes six settings at once. People who are not your friends see only your name, a small profile picture and a small cover photo. They cannot open the full-size picture, cannot see your posts, your photos or your stories, and get a shortened About page. Every public post you made in the past becomes friends-only. Tag review and timeline review turn on, so nothing lands on your profile without your approval. Facebook shows a lock badge on your profile so people know why it looks empty.
Nothing changes for your friends. They see exactly what they saw before.
On the web, open your profile, click the three dots under the cover photo and choose Lock profile. If the option is missing, it is not available in your country yet.
Facebook launched the lock in India and has since turned it on across South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Latin America, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Egypt, Nigeria and Indonesia. It is not available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or the European Union. If you live somewhere without it, the next three pages do the same job by hand: hide your friends list, check your profile with View As, and set the audience on your photos.
Open your profile, tap the three dots and choose Unlock profile. Your settings go back to what they were, except that the old public posts stay friends-only until you change them post by post.
Only the small version. The lock hides the full-size profile picture and cover photo from everyone who is not your friend.
They see a small lock badge on your profile and nothing else changes for them. Facebook does not send a notification.
The feature is only available in certain countries. Outside them, set your friends list, photos and past posts to Friends by hand; the pages linked below walk through each one.
No. Your name and small picture still appear in search and in friend suggestions. To disappear from a specific person, block them.
