Want to add more privacy to your Facebook account by locking your profile? By locking your profile, people who aren’t on your Facebook friends list can only see a limited view of your profile. A locked profile will show timeline photos and posts, profile pictures and cover photos, stories, and new posts only to people in your friends list. Additionally, your “Public” posts will no longer be public and will only be visible to your friends.
If you want to lock your Facebook profile, you can do so from the mobile app or browser, however, it should be noted that the desktop version of Facebook does not have the option to lock your profile, but there is a workaround. Additionally, this feature is limited to the Android app. Read on to learn how to lock your Facebook profile.
Lock Facebook profile via mobile app
To lock your Facebook profile via the Android mobile app:
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Open the Facebook app and click on your profile
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Click the three-dot menu icon next to “Add to Story”
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Here you should see the “Lock Profile” option, click on it
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The next page will give you a brief introduction to how it works and at the bottom it will give you the option to lock your profile, click on it
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You should see a popup that says “You have locked your profile”, click “OK”
Lock Facebook profile from desktop
While there is no direct way to lock your app from the browser, there is a workaround if you don’t have access to the mobile app:
- Go to https://www.facebook.com/
- Click on your profile icon In the URL, replace “www” with “m” so that the URL now reads “m.facebook.com/yourprofilename”
- This will take you to the mobile version of Facebook on your desktop browser, and you should see a three-dot menu next to the “Edit Profile” option
- In the three-dot menu you should see the “Lock Profile” option, click on it
- Just like the Android version, the next page will show you how the lock works, with the option to lock your profile at the bottom. click on it
- Your profile is now locked
iOS users can use a desktop workaround to lock their profile or borrow an Android device and follow the steps above.
If you want to unlock your Facebook profile, the steps are the same on the mobile app and desktop. Now, you will see the “Unlock Profile” option instead of the “Lock Profile” option, tap on it and tap on “Unlock” on the next screen. You will see an introduction on how to unlock your profile at the bottom, as well as an option to unlock your profile, which you can click to unlock your profile.
Does WhatsApp’s new privacy policy mean the end of your privacy? We discuss this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.
