How to Mute Someone on Instagram Without Unfollowing Them

Mute is the quietest control Instagram has. It changes your Feed and your Stories row, tells nobody, and leaves everything the other person sees exactly as it was.

Updated October 2026

How do you mute someone on Instagram?

There are three places to do it, and they all lead to the same switches.

From the profile:

1. Open the account you want to mute.

2. Tap the Following button under their bio.

3. Tap Mute.

4. Turn on the switches you want: posts, Stories, Notes.

From a post in your Feed, tap the three dots on the post and choose Mute, then pick posts, Stories or both.

From the Stories row, press and hold the person's circle at the top of your Feed and choose Mute. This is the fastest route when it is only their Stories you want gone.

To unmute, repeat the same steps and turn the switches off. Unmuting is as silent as muting.

Does someone know if you mute them on Instagram?

No. Instagram sends no notification when you mute or unmute someone, puts no label on either profile, and gives the other person no list where your name could appear. Its 2018 announcement stated plainly that muted accounts are not aware of it.

The only way someone could suspect it is indirectly. If you used to like or reply to their Stories every day and suddenly stop, they might notice the silence. They would have no way to tell whether you muted them, got busy, or just stopped opening the app.

Any app or website claiming to show who muted you is guessing, or collecting Instagram logins. No legitimate tool has that data, because Instagram does not expose it.

What is the difference between mute, restrict and block?

The three controls differ in who notices and what changes for the other person:

• Mute changes only your own Feed, Stories row and Notes. The other person sees and can interact with everything of yours exactly as before.
• Restrict, introduced in October 2019, changes how the other person can interact with you. Their new comments on your posts are visible only to them unless you approve them, their messages go to your requests, and they cannot see when you are online or have read their messages. Your profile stays fully visible to them.
• Block removes you from each other's view. They cannot find your profile, see your posts or message you, and the follow between you ends.

Which one to pick

Mute if the problem is that you are tired of seeing someone's content. Restrict if the problem is how they behave toward you, in comments or messages. Block if you want no contact at all. How to know if someone restricted you on Instagram covers Restrict from the receiving side, and how to know if someone blocked you on Instagram explains the one test that tells a block apart.

Can you mute someone's stories but not posts?

Yes. Posts and Stories have separate switches, so you can mute either one alone. Muting only Stories takes the person's circle out of the part of the row you scroll through; in most versions it sits greyed out at the far end, where you can still tap it on purpose. Their feed posts keep appearing as normal.

Muting only posts does the opposite: their posts stop appearing in your Feed while their Stories still sit in the row.

Notes work the same way. You can mute someone's Notes while leaving the rest alone, which is useful for accounts that post a status update every hour. Turning them back on is the same switch; how to unmute Notes on Instagram also covers the route through Muted accounts.

Does muting affect what you see in Explore?

Mute is built for the content of accounts you follow, in your Feed, your Stories row and your Notes. Instagram does not describe it as a filter for Explore or for the Reels tab, and those surfaces are driven by recommendations rather than by who you follow.

If what bothers you is a kind of content rather than one account, the tools for recommendations are different. Tapping Not interested on a suggested post tells Instagram to show less of it, and the official reset in Settings clears your suggestions altogether. How to reset the Instagram algorithm explains what that reset clears and what it keeps.

How do you see who you've muted?

Instagram keeps a list. Open your profile, tap the three-line menu, go to Settings and activity and look for Muted accounts. If the app has moved it in your version, type muted into the search bar at the top of Settings.

The list shows each account you have muted and, in most versions, whether it is their posts, their Stories or both. Unmuting from the list or from the person's profile both work.

Muted chats are a separate thing. Muting messages or calls from someone is done inside the conversation's own settings and does not appear on the muted accounts list.

Do muted accounts still see your stories?

Yes. Mute works in one direction only. The person you muted can still see your posts and Stories, like them, comment and send you messages, and if they watch your Story they appear on your viewer list like anyone else.

If you want someone to stop seeing your Stories, the control is Hide story, found in Settings and activity under the Story and live settings, where you can pick accounts that will not see your Stories without blocking them. Close Friends is the other route: share a Story only with a list you choose, and editing Close Friends on Instagram is silent, so nobody is told when they're added or dropped.

The reverse case is the one creators feel. When followers mute your Stories, they drop out of your viewer list without unfollowing, so a Story can lose views while your follower count stays where it was. Who viewed your Instagram Story explains how that list is built. Only you see a Story's view count, and buying Instagram Story views adds to that private count on a Story that is already live; it does not bring muted followers back or change who Instagram shows your Stories to. Every Instagram service is listed on the Instagram page.

Questions people ask about muting on Instagram