How to Make Your Spotify Profile Private

Spotify doesn't have an Instagram-style "private account" toggle, which surprises a lot of people who go looking for one. But you can control almost everything others see — you just do it piece by piece rather than with a single button. This guide walks through each privacy lever, what it hides, and where to find it.

Quick answer: There's no single switch that makes your whole profile private. Instead you hide the pieces: turn on Private Session to stop sharing what you're playing, set playlists to private (or remove them from your profile), keep your Liked Songs private, and turn off listening-activity sharing in Settings. Your baseline profile — display name, photo, and follower/following counts — stays visible no matter what.

What "private" can and can't mean on Spotify

Before you start flipping settings, it helps to know where the line sits. Your profile itself — your display name, profile photo, and follower/following counts — stays visible to anyone who lands on it. That's the baseline, and there's no setting that removes it short of deleting your account.

What you do control is your activity and your playlists: what you're currently playing, what you've played recently, and which playlists show up publicly. So "making your profile private" on Spotify really means minimizing what's public, one lever at a time. The good news is that between the settings below you can hide almost everything that feels personal.

One heads-up before you dive in: Spotify moves menus around between app versions and regions, so the exact wording and location can differ from what you see below. The labels here reflect a common recent layout — if a toggle isn't where described, look for a similarly named option in Settings.

1. Turn on a Private Session

A Private Session stops your listening from showing in Friend Activity and from influencing what your friends see, for about six hours (or until you toggle it off or restart the app). It's the fastest way to listen to something without it broadcasting anywhere.

• Mobile: Settings → Social → toggle Private session on.
• Desktop: click your name in the top-right → Private session.

Because it's temporary, treat Private Session as a per-listen tool rather than a permanent setting — if privacy matters every time, pair it with the activity settings below.

2. Stop sharing your listening activity

For a lasting change, turn off activity sharing so what you play stops feeding the Friend Activity panel going forward:

• Mobile / Desktop: Settings → Social → turn off "Share my listening activity" and, if present, "Recently played artists."

With these off, your listening won't appear in the Friend Activity feed for people who follow you. This is the closest thing to a "hide what I'm listening to" switch that Spotify offers.

3. Make individual playlists private

Playlists are the other big thing people want off their profile. Any playlist you own can be flipped to private:

• Open the playlist → tap the three dots (⋯) → Make private.
• Private playlists don't appear on your public profile and can't be followed publicly — only you can see them.

Do this for each playlist you'd rather keep to yourself. There's no bulk toggle, so it's a per-playlist job.

4. Remove playlists from your profile

Sometimes you want a playlist to stay public — so you can share its link — but not have it listed on your profile. You can do both: open the playlist → three dots → Remove from profile (the exact wording varies by version). The playlist stays live at its link but drops off your profile page. If a playlist you expected to see is missing entirely, our guide on if a playlist isn't showing covers the usual causes.

5. Hide your Liked Songs

Good news here: your Liked Songs are private by default and don't appear on your public profile. Nobody can browse them. The only way they'd become visible is if you deliberately built a public playlist out of them at some point — if you did, just open that playlist and set it to private using the steps above.

What about who viewed your profile?

This is the one part that's already private by design. Spotify never shows who viewed your profile, and no notification is sent when someone looks — so there's nothing to lock down there. For the full picture, see who viewed your profile and can someone see if you view their profile. If you'd rather look someone up without following or interacting at all, you can also browse privately.

Check what's currently public

Once you've flipped the settings above, it's worth confirming what a stranger actually sees. Open Music Profile Viewer, a free free Spotify profile viewer, to review your public footprint — photo, name, follower and following counts, and any playlists still showing publicly — all on one screen. It uses Spotify's official read-only login and stores nothing. While you're tidying up, our guide on how to edit your profile covers changing your display name and photo.