Facebook introduced highlights in 2016 as a way for users to showcase their favorite photos and videos in a dedicated section of their profile. Highlights make it easy to curate and share your best Facebook moments with friends. But one question that often comes up is whether you can see who has viewed your highlights.
The short answer
No, Facebook does not allow you to see who has viewed your highlights reel. Highlights are considered public content, so anyone who visits your profile can see your highlights. But Facebook does not provide insight into who specifically has watched your highlights.
Why you can’t see who viewed your Facebook highlights
There are a few reasons why Facebook doesn’t allow you to see who viewed your highlights:
- Privacy – Facebook prioritizes user privacy, so they limit the ability to see who viewed profile content.
- Highlight visibility – Highlights are public, so anyone can view them. Facebook likely assumes a broad audience has seen highlights.
- Feature focus – Highlights are meant for curating content, not tracking views. The feature is not designed for insight on reach.
While you can’t see who watched your highlights, you can see total impressions and engagement on each highlight cover photo. But this metric shows overall performance, not individual viewers.
What viewer information Facebook does provide
While you can’t see who viewed your highlights, Facebook does provide some insight into highlight performance:
Total impressions
This shows how many times your highlight cover photo appeared on screen. It provides a general sense of reach.
Total engaged users
This shows how many people interacted with your highlight by tapping to view it or using reactions.
Total reactions, comments and shares
You can see the total number of reactions, comments and shares per highlight. This shows overall engagement.
Content reach
Facebook’s “reached” metric shows how many people saw content from your highlight in their feed. This provides insight on organic reach.
While not as insightful as viewer names, these metrics give a general sense of how many people your highlights reached and resonated with.
Other Facebook visibility tools
While highlights viewer data is limited, here are some other ways to get insight about your Facebook profile and content:
Page visits
This section shows how many times your profile was viewed over a period of time. It’s not specific to highlights.
Post reach
You can see reach data on specific posts you’ve shared to your profile or page. This includes photos and videos you may have added to highlights.
Facebook Analytics
Facebook Pages have access to Facebook Analytics, which provides detailed insight on your page’s content, users and traffic sources over time.
Facebook Ads
If you boost posts or run ads to your Facebook presence, the Ad Manager provides in-depth data on impressions, reach and engagement.
Should Facebook add highlight viewer names?
Some users argue Facebook should provide more transparency and allow you to see who viewed highlights. But there are a few considerations:
- Privacy issues – Viewer data exposes info some may consider private or stalker-ish if misused.
- Design distraction – Highlights are for curating content, so viewer data could shift focus away from that goal.
- Feature parity – Most content types don’t show viewers, so highlights would be an exception.
- Data overload – With broad visibility, a complete viewer list could become long and hard to parse.
There are pros and cons to showing highlight viewers. But Facebook’s stance aligns with their general philosophy on privacy. For now, highlights remain focused on curating and sharing your best moments.
Other ways to see who engages with your content
If you’re really interested in seeing who engages with your content, there are a few options beyond Facebook highlights:
LinkedIn Articles
LinkedIn allows you to see who viewed your published articles and who clicked links within them.
Instagram Stories
You can see a list of users who have viewed your Instagram Story. Views disappear after 24 hours.
Facebook Live Insights
Facebook Live video shows you real-time viewer data and a post-broadcast summary of peak viewers and comments.
Facebook Ads
If you promote content via Facebook Ads, the Ads Manager shows you detailed data on everyone who saw or engaged with your ads.
Google Analytics
For content you publish on your website or blog, Google Analytics can track pageviews by user type and location, referrals from social media and more.
While highlights themselves don’t show viewer data, there are ways to gain more insight on who engages with your content on other platforms.
Tips for maximizing your Facebook highlight reach
While you can’t see who watches your highlights, you can take steps to maximize your highlight views:
- Highlight cover photo – Use eye-catching images that stand out in the feed.
- Descriptions – Add details about your highlights to provide context.
- Pin highlights – Pin your best highlights section to the top of your profile.
- Share highlights – Directly share your highlights section or cover images.
- Link in bios – Add a link to your highlights in social media bios.
- Tag people – Tag relevant people in your highlight covers to notify them.
- Promote sections – Consider boosting or running ads pointing to your highlights.
- Engage viewers – Respond to any reactions/comments on your highlights.
While highlight viewer data is limited, these tips can help maximize the reach and engagement your highlights receive.
Conclusion
Facebook currently does not allow users to see who has viewed their highlights reels. This is likely due to privacy considerations, the public nature of highlights, and the intended focus of the feature on curating content.
While you can’t see individual viewers, Facebook does provide metrics like impressions and engaged users to gauge performance. And there are other platforms and analytics tools that offer more insight into content engagement and reach.
If highlighting your best moments for maximum visibility is your goal, focus on creating compelling highlight covers, promoting your highlights across channels and engaging any followers who interact with your highlights. While the exact viewers remain anonymous, these tactics can help expand your highlights’ reach.