Facebook offers its users a privacy option, including the ability to lock your profile. Locking a user’s profile only shows a limited view of the profile to those who are not on the Friends list on Facebook. A locked profile will show photos and posts on the timeline, profile pictures and cover photos, stories and new posts to only those who are on the friend list. Furthermore, their ‘public’ posts will no longer be public and only visible to friends.
If you want to lock your Facebook profile, you can do this from the mobile app or from your browser, however, it should be noted that the desktop version of Facebook does not have the option to lock your profile, but the workaround is . Also, this feature is limited to Android apps. Read on to find out how you can lock your Facebook profile.
Lock facebook profile through mobile app
To lock your Facebook profile through Android mobile app:
- Open the Facebook app and tap on your profile
- Tap the three dot menu icon next to ‘Add to Story’
- Here, you should see a lock profile option, tap on it
- The next page will give you a brief overview of how it works with the option to lock your profile below, tap on it
- You should see a pop-up that says ‘See you locked your profile’, tap on OK
- Lock facebook profile via desktop
- While there is no direct way to lock your app from a browser, there is a workaround you cannot use even for a mobile app:
Visit https://www.facebook.com/
Click on your profile icon in the URL, replace with www with so m ‘so that the URL now reads .com / 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
Like the Android version, this next page will show you how locking works, with the option to lock your profile at the bottom. Click on it
Your profile is now closed
iOS users can use the desktop workaround to lock their profiles or borrow Android devices and follow the steps above.
If you want to unlock your Facebook profile, the steps are the same on both mobile apps and desktops. In place of the lock profile option, you will now see an unlock profile option, tap on it and hit unlock on the next screen. You will see a brief description of how your profile works and there is an option to unlock your profile at the bottom, click on it and your profile will be unlocked.