How to Mute Someone on Instagram in 5 Steps, With Photos

Key Points

• Muting someone on Instagram allows you to control what you see on your own terms without hurting anyone’s feelings.
• Muting is useful for dealing with excessive posting, curating your feed, and avoiding conflict.
• To mute someone on Instagram, open the app, visit the person’s profile, tap their story or archived stories, tap the three dots, select ‘Mute’, and choose your preference.
• To unmute someone, go to their profile, tap ‘Following’, and select ‘Unmute’.

Need a break from certain accounts but don’t want to unfollow them entirely? Sounds like you need to know how to mute someone on Instagram. This great feature functions very much the same as blocking or removing a follow, but here’s the catch: You don’t have to do either of those things to do it. In essence, the muting feature silently removes a person’s posts from your following list without them knowing it — and without you needing to remove their account for good. Here’s how it’s done.

Why Mute Someone on Instagram?

When you mute someone on Instagram, you get to enjoy a more enjoyable and stress-free social media experience by tuning out a problematic person’s posts. As an added benefit, you get to do so without hurting anybody’s feelings. Instead of completely unfollowing or outright blocking someone, muting enables you to control what you see on your own terms. (And you can do it all without offending or cutting ties with anyone to boot.) Here are three great reasons you might want to mute someone on Instagram. 

Excessive Posting

There’s nothing more mildly infuriating than an Instagram user who posts too much. If it’s a celebrity or influencer, you can simply hit unfollow and be done with it. But what if it’s a friend or family member? When someone you know personally starts flooding your Instagram feed with excessive posts, muting can be a serious lifesaver. This feature keeps their stories or posts (or both!) off of your feed without them being aware. Now, you can scroll through Instagram without a cluttered feed full of multiple posts from the same person.

Curating Your Feed

Maybe no one has done anything to get on your nerves. Perhaps you simply want to clean up your feed a bit. Whether it be FOMO from your former high school friends or sponsored posts from people you met in college, muting helps you take better control of what you see (and puts you in control of what you don’t). Plus, there’s no hard feelings. Those acquaintances can keep posting, your feed can look cleaner, and no one will feel like they’ve been slighted by a random unfollowing from out of the blue.

Avoiding Conflict

Going hand in hand with these previous points, the ability to mute on Instagram can also come in handy when you’re in a disagreement with a friend or loved one. Your gut might tell you to hit unfollow, but your brain might prefer muting as the more courteous option. Instead of making a rash decision in the heat of the moment, muting on Instagram allows you to work toward a more peaceful solution without feelings getting even more hurt than they already are. Simply mute the person, then unmute them when a resolution has been reached.

How to Mute Someone on Instagram

Now that you know what makes the ability to mute someone on Instagram worth knowing, let’s describe the steps required to make it happen. (Thankfully for all Instagram users, these steps will work regardless of if you’re using an Apple or Android device.) Follow along with each step below, using the photos as reference points along the way. Then, we’ll review how to undo the action and unmute someone on Instagram.

Step One: Open Instagram

First, open the Instagram app on your smartphone. From there, visit the person’s profile you’re hoping to mute. Make sure you’re actually following the person before we proceed. If you aren’t, then you won’t be able to mute them.

Step Two: View Story

Secondly, tap their Instagram Story (if they have one active). If they don’t have one, tap one of their archived stories saved below their bio. On the off chance they don’t have either of these things, tap the “Following” button above their photo grid.

Step Three: Tap Three Dots

At the top of the person’s story, you should see three dots next to the “X” button that closes the story. Tap the three dots to open up a menu of your available options. (Tapping the “Following” button from the previous step also reveals this menu.)

Step Four: Select Mute

From the menu that appears on the screen, tap the “Mute” option. This will reveal a new menu asking you to choose from one of multiple muting options: Mute the person’s story, or mute their story and posts.

Step Five: Choose Preference

Make your choice from the menu on the screen. Muting the person’s story will keep their posts on your feed while muting both story and posts will stop you from seeing anything they post. (You can still visit their profile to view these things, even when muted.) That’s it! You’ve successfully learned how to mute someone on Instagram. Repeat these steps for as many users as you see fit.

How to Unmute Someone on Instagram

Now that you know how to mute someone on Instagram, we should touch on how to undo your actions. There may come a time in every Instagram user’s life when they need to unmute a person after hitting them with a mute. Luckily, the process is just as simple as muting.

First, return to the muted user’s profile. Then, tap the “Following” button. Select “Unmute” from the menu that appears on the screen. Voila! You’ve successfully unmuted the person. Their posts and stories will now reappear on your feed as usual.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Ink Drop/Shutterstock.com.