Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
For the first few years of Instagram’s existence, it was a pain to hide Stories from people. You had to dig into an individual Story’s settings and select followers to hide it from. Then, if you wanted to let those followers see the next Story, you had to go into that Story’s settings and undo the block.
But in 2018, Instagram launched the close friends feature, which makes it much easier to share content with a limited group. Once you’ve created a close friends list, you’ll have the option to share a Story with just that list. If you’re posting content that could be controversial, personal, or NSFW, the option can save you some stress.
In case you don’t know how to add folks to your close friends list, we’ll show you how to get started.
How to add close friends in the Instagram app
Open the Instagram app for Android or iOS.
Tap your avatar in the bottom right corner.
Tap the menu button on the top right and tap Close Friends.
If you don’t yet have a close friends list, you may see a screen with a Get Started button. Tap it. That leads to a list of suggestions for people to start your list with, along with a link for information on how it works. When you’ve chosen your initial list, tap on Create List.
Now, when you select Close Friends, you’ll see your current close friends list. To add more friends, type their names (or Instagram usernames) into the Search field at the top of the page, and tap the check circle next to their name.
If you want to remove any names from the list, simply uncheck the circle to the right of the name.
Update June 22nd, 2022, 5:03PM ET: This article was originally published on February 5th, 2020, and has been updated to account for changes in the app and to remove mention of the Threads app, which is no longer available.