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Facebook Profile Lock Steps: How to Lock Your FB Profile Via Mobile App or Desktop

Barbara H. Pugh

Looking to add more privacy to your Facebook account by locking your profile? By locking your profile, people who are not on your Facebook friends list will only see a limited view of the profile. A locked profile will show photos and posts on the timeline, profile photo and cover photo, stories, and new posts only to people on the friends list. In addition, your “Public” posts will no longer be public and will only be visible to your friends.

If you want to lock your Facebook profile, you can do so 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 there is a Workaround . In addition, this functionality is limited to Android app. Read on to find out how to lock your Facebook profile.

Lock Facebook profile via mobile app

To lock your Facebook profile using the Android mobile app:

  1. Open the Facebook app and tap on your profile

  2. Tap the three-dot menu icon next to “Add to story”

  3. Here you should see a lock profile option, tap on it

  4. The next page will explain how it works with an option to lock your profile at the bottom, tap on it

  5. You should see a pop-up window saying “You have locked your profile”, press OK

Lock Facebook Profile Via Desktop

While there is no direct way to lock your app from the browser, there is a workaround you can use if you don’t have access to the mobile app:

  1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/
  2. Click on your profile icon.In the URL, replace ‘www’ with ‘m’ so that the URL now reads ‘m.facebook.com/yourprofilename’
  3. This will take you to a mobile version of Facebook on your desktop browser and you should see a three dot menu next to the Edit Profile option.
  4. In the three dot menu you should see the Lock profile option, click on it
  5. Just like the Android version, this next page will show you how the lock works, with an option to lock your profile at the bottom. Click on it
  6. Your profile is now locked

IOS users can use the desktop workaround to lock their profiles or borrow an Android device and follow the aforementioned steps.

If you want to unlock your Facebook profile, the steps are the same on the mobile app and on the desktop. Instead of the Lock Profile option, you will now see an Unlock Profile option, tap it and tap Unlock on the next screen. You will see a summary on how unlocking your profile works and an option to unlock your profile at the bottom click on it and your profile will be unlocked.

Is WhatsApp’s new privacy policy the end of your privacy? We discussed it on Orbital, our weekly tech podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Where RSS, download episode, or just hit the play button below.