Back in 2019, the social network Instagram began testing the feature wherein the users can decide whether they want to hide likes or not. Then the company removed like counts for some Instagram users, explaining that the new feature will help reduce the social pressure among users. In 2021, the company announced that the experiment goes global. AIN.UA journalist noticed the option in the personal Instagram account and now tells how to hide the counter of likes.
How to hide Like counts on Instagram
In a nutshell:
- Select the photo where you want to hide the likes
- Click on the triple dot icon at the top of the photo
- Tap “Hide like count”
- If it is a video, the user hides not only the number of likes but also the number of views
Details
Users have two new options: to hide the number of likes on personal photos and disable the counter on the posts of other users. It’s noteworthy that the user can’t hide all the likes on personal photos at once – they can enable the feature in the settings of each image. Here’s how to do it:
- Open your Instafram prifile
- Click on the photo where you want to hide likes
- Click the triple dot icon at the top of the photo
- Tap “Hide like count”
You can also hide the counter while posting a photo. To do this, go to “Settings” and enable the option “Hide Like and View Counts.”
Besides, you can hide the number of likes of other users in Instagram settings. In this case, the user won’t be able to see the number of likes, while the feed will still be generated based on potentially interesting posts for a particular person.
- Go to Settings and select Privacy
- Click on Posts
- Enable the option “Hide Like and View Counts”
Why it’s interesting
Facebook, which owns Instagram, says the feature of hiding the likes will help focus users on the content rather than studying its popularity. For this reason, the company is actively working on its implementation, particularly on Facebook. The preliminary testing showed that not all users need such a feature – for example, some of them use data to determine the popularity or relevance of their content. Therefore the company decided to provide some variants of settings.
It is also interesting that Instagram has not announced the official launch of this feature. In April 2021, it became known only about the start of global testing. Users who received access to this option were promised to send a notification, but our journalist has not received any notifications.
