How To Hide Friends Likes On Facebook

The pages and comments you choose to like on Facebook are your own decision. So why does Facebook see fit to share this knowledge with the world? Some things you like may be personal or private. Unfortunately once you like something, everyone who visits that page, or yours, can see it.

"I'm not comfortable with this. I'd much rather keep certain things private, likes included."

If you're not the type to make a grand statement and would prefer to keep all of your likes to yourself, then you're in luck. Here are a few tips and tricks to help avoid putting too much of your personal feelings on display. This article will tackle is how to go about hiding all of your Facebook likes from anyone but yourself.

Different Types of Likes on Facebook

First, you'll need to understand that there are several types of likes that can be found on Facebook. There are those for different categories, such as Movies, Television, Music, Books, Sports Teams, Athletes, Inspirational People, Restaurants, Games, Activities, Interests, Sports, Food, Clothing, Websites, and Other. Clearly, there are a lot of places a like can show up. You have the ability to control, on a category level, who can see your likes. This means that you'll need to hide all or show all likes in a certain category.

There currently is no option for hiding individually liked pages. This means if you like a page for football, it will show that you liked a page for sports but you can have it so that the individual team liked doesn't show up.

There are also likes that show up on your timeline from friends or strangers. You can hide these as well but similar to the categories, you'll need an all or nothing approach to a certain group of people. This means you'll need to adjust who can see what on your timeline as opposed to the likes directly.

Hiding your Likes From the Public Eye

The steps to privatizing your personal likes on Facebook are rather simple. In order to hide your likes:

First, log in to Facebook with the proper credentials.
Next, click on your profile's avatar/image located in the bar toward the top of the page.
- The avatar/image will be accompanied by your display name and be to the right of the Groups icon.
From the profile page, locate the More drop-down menu on the bar just below your cover photo.
Click the More drop-down and from the menu click on Likes .
Scroll down to your "Likes" area and inside the banner off to the far right, locate the Manage button.
- The Manage button is represented by a three-dots icon.
Click the Manage button and from the menu select Edit the Privacy of Your Likes .
A list of categories will pop-up. To the right of each category is a globe with a drop-down arrow. For every category, you want to make private, click the corresponding drop-down and select Only me .
- The Only me icon will be a subdued lock. You can also choose to allow only friends to see your likes by selecting the Friends option.
- You can also choose specific people to share or hide the likes from by selecting the Custom choice from the list.
Once the level of privacy has been selected for the categories you've chosen, each one should now have the appropriate icon visible. This lets you know that it has been set correctly.
Once you're finished editing who can and cannot see your likes, click the Close button at the bottom.

Your likes in those categories have now been privatized. As mentioned earlier, hiding likes for individual pages are not currently in the cards. However, being able to choose different restrictions for each category is still a decent way to maintain some privacy.

Hiding Your Likes from Specific Groups

Another way to remove your likes from the public is to prevent whole groups of people from seeing what's on your Facebook timeline. To do this:

While already logged in to Facebook, click the drop-down arrow in the top-right corner of the page.
From the menu that pops up, select Settings & Privacy then click on Settings.
In the left-hand side menu, select Profile and Tagging .

4. From this page, you'll have three different options that revolve around who can see your timeline, who can tag you, and if you want to review those posts before they are made public.

5. If you back out and instead select Privacy from the left-side menu, you can edit "Your Activity". This means all past and future posts can be made invisible to the public, all friends or specified ones, or everyone but you.

Wrapping Up

Perhaps one day Facebook will add more granular privacy controls for likes where you'll be able to hide the fact that you enjoy water polo or that you're a cat person instead of a dog person. Unfortunately, until that day comes we're all forced to use the features that Facebook has provided us.

Do you have any questions, experience, tips or tricks with hiding likes on Facebook? Let us know in the comment section below!