How to mute people on Instagram

Tired of comparing your behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel on Instagram? (To quote Steven Furtick.) The social network has its charms, but for many, it can be a place that’s littered with envy-inducing photos and videos of everybody else’s “perfect” lives. If you’re not careful, it can trigger all sorts of insecurities — sometimes even to the detriment of your mental health.

That’s why it’s important to be mindful of the type of Instagram content you’re consuming on a daily basis. While it’s easy to unfollow accounts from influencers, though, you can’t exactly unfollow or full-on block a friend or a family member without hurting some feelings. That’s where Instagram’s “mute” feature comes in handy: it lets you mute posts and / or stories from people without them ever knowing. As a result, you won’t have to see your friend’s seemingly hundreds of vacation photos and stories on your feed. It’s a nice little trick that’ll keep your relationships and sanity intact at the same time and a relatively simple process we’ll guide you through here.

What you can do depends on whether you’re using a desktop computer or your smartphone. You can, for example, mute someone on their profile page on your desktop or mobile and from their feed on mobile; you can also mute their messages, calls, and / or chat activity notifications from either your phone or your computer. Here’s how.

Note: At least one of our staff didn’t have access to this feature, so be aware that this may not be available to you. That being said:

On your phone, you can also mute people from your feed itself. Here’s how to do that:

Muting a person’s stories or posts can be helpful, but what about messages? If somebody’s spamming your inbox with unwanted DMs (and you can’t block or unfollow them), you can also mute them on both desktop and mobile by following these steps: