How to Create a Private Board on Pinterest
Pinterest calls it secret rather than private, and the difference between the two words is where people lose the setting.
When you create a board, switch on the secret option before saving it. An existing board can be made secret from its edit panel, in the same place.
A secret board is visible only to you and to anybody you invite to it. It does not appear on your profile, in your followers' feeds, or in Pinterest search.
A padlock marks it in your board list, which is the fastest way to confirm the setting took.
Secret boards change more than visibility, and the second effect is the one that surprises businesses.
Saving a pin publicly is a signal. It tells Pinterest that this image is worth keeping, it exposes the pin to your followers, and it feeds the recommendation system on both sides — yours and the original pinner's.
A save to a secret board is deliberately quiet. The pin is in your account, you can find it, and the wider machinery does not react the same way. For personal planning that is exactly right. For a business account using boards as a content strategy, it means secret boards do no promotional work at all.
The other practical limit is collaboration. Secret boards can have invited collaborators, which makes them usable for a project with a small group, but anybody invited can see everything on the board.
And the state is reversible in one direction with a caveat: making a secret board public publishes everything on it at once, which is how people accidentally announce a gift list. There is no partial publication and no preview of what followers will see.
Creating one
Start a new board, name it, and switch on the secret option before creating it.
The board appears in your list with a padlock.
Saving a pin lets you pick it from the board list like any other, and the save is silent.
On mobile the switch is in the same creation screen, below the name.
Making an existing board secret
Open the board, use the edit control, and switch the secret option on.
The board disappears from your profile immediately, along with its pins.
Followers are not notified, and the board simply stops being there for them.
The reverse works too, and publishing a secret board exposes every pin on it at once.
Who can see a secret board
You, and anybody you invite as a collaborator.
Not your followers, not search, and not the people whose pins you saved.
Collaborators see the whole board rather than individual pins, so the unit of sharing is the board.
There is no read-only invitation: a collaborator can add and remove pins.
What secret boards are good for
Gifts, surprises and anything with a reveal date.
Personal planning that you would rather not broadcast, which is the most common use.
Research and competitor collection for a business account, where the saving should not endorse anything publicly.
Drafting a board before launching it, then publishing when it is full enough to be worth following.
What they are not good for
Anything meant to reach people. Secret boards do no distribution work.
Security. A collaborator can screenshot and share anything, and secret is not encrypted or protected.
Separating accounts: if the real need is a clean profile for work, a second account or a business account is the right structure.
And archiving old boards, which has its own control and keeps them out of the profile without the privacy change.
Questions people ask about secret boards
How do I make a Pinterest board private?
Switch on the secret option when creating it, or in the edit panel of an existing board. A padlock marks it in your list.
Can my followers see a secret board?
No. It is hidden from your profile, from followers' feeds and from search. Only you and invited collaborators see it.
Does the original pinner know I saved their pin?
Saves to a secret board are quiet and do not feed the usual signals the way a public save does.
Can I make a secret board public later?
Yes, and it publishes every pin on it at once. There is no partial publication.
Can other people pin to my secret board?
Only collaborators you invite, and they can see the whole board.
Is secret the same as archived?
No. Archiving keeps a board out of your profile without the privacy behavior, and is meant for boards you are finished with.
Keep reading
- followers on a Pinterest profile — Secret boards do no work for an audience, so the public profile carries all of it, and followers on a Pinterest profile acts on the number that decides whether anyone follows.
- deleting or archiving a board — If the board should go rather than hide, deleting or archiving a board covers the difference.
- what pin views count — Public saves and secret saves behave differently in the numbers, and what pin views count explains the metrics.