By default, your Facebook reels are visible to all of your followers and anyone who visits your profile. You can adjust the privacy settings for each reel to limit who can view them.
Visibility Settings for Facebook Reels
There are a few different options for controlling who can see your reels on Facebook:
Public
Making a reel public means it is visible to anyone on or off Facebook – even people who don’t follow you. Public reels may also appear on the Explore page and be surfaced through hashtags.
Friends
Setting a reel to friends restricts visibility only to people who are connected to you as friends on Facebook. Friends of friends will not be able to see it.
Specific Friends List
You can create a custom friends list on Facebook and set your reel to be visible only to the people on that list. This lets you share reels with a select group of friends rather than your entire friends list.
Only Me
Choosing “only me” makes your reel completely private. Only you will be able to view it. Other people visiting your profile will not see reels set to only me.
Changing the Default Privacy Setting
In addition to adjusting the visibility for each reel, you can also change the default privacy setting for new reels you create:
- Go to your profile and tap the hamburger menu in the top right.
- Select “Settings & Privacy” then choose “Privacy.”
- Tap “Reels” and choose your desired default visibility setting.
This will make all new reels automatically have that visibility, but you can still change it individually per reel.
Limiting Reel Visibility for a Specific Audience
If you want to prevent a certain person or group from seeing your reels, you have a few options:
Blocking
You can block individual users which prevents them from viewing your profile or any of your content.
Restricting
Instead of fully blocking someone, you can choose to restrict them. This makes you no longer friends while still allowing them to see content you share publicly.
Excluding from Custom Lists
If you don’t want to block or restrict someone, you can create a friends list that excludes them and set your reels to be visible to only that list.
Reel Visibility on Facebook Pages
If you have a Facebook Page, the visibility settings work slightly differently than on a personal profile.
By default, reels posted to a Facebook Page are public. But Page admins can change the default reel visibility just like on a personal profile.
However, Pages don’t have friends lists. So you cannot restrict reels on a Page to be viewable only by specific people.
The visibility options for Page reels are:
- Public
- Page Likers
- Only Me
“Page Likers” limits visibility of the reel to people who have liked your Facebook Page.
Checking Reel Insights to See Who Viewed
For reels you’ve posted, you can check the insights to see data on who has watched them:
- Go to your reels tab
- Tap the three dots above a reel
- Select “See Insights”
This will show you the total number of views and other metrics. It can also show you the demographic data on who has watched like gender, age range, country, etc.
However, you cannot see the names or profiles of individual people who have viewed your reels.
Making Old Reels Private
For previously posted reels, you can change the visibility at any time. Just go to your reels tab, tap the three dots above a reel, and select “Change Visibility.”
This is useful if you have old reels set to public or friends, and now want to make them private or limit to a specific friends list.
Changing the visibility will apply immediately. The reel will no longer show up for people according to the new privacy setting.
Considerations When Changing Reel Privacy
- Public reels can gain more reach as they appear in more places.
- Private reels allow you to be more selective in sharing certain moments.
- Friends-only reels are a middle ground if you don’t want reels completely public.
- Custom friends lists let you share reels with specific people.
- Blocking or restricting prevents unwanted people from interacting with you.
- Frequently changing reel privacy can confuse your audience.
Other Facebook Reel Settings
In addition to the visibility setting, there are some other options that control how your Facebook reels appear:
Location Tagging
You can add a location tag to your reels. This geotags them with the place where they were recorded. Viewers will be able to see the location tag.
Hashtag and Profile Tagging
Tagging other hashtags or people’s profiles in your reel makes it more discoverable. The reel may show up when people click on those hashtags or profiles.
Comments
Allowing comments on your reel lets people interact with it by leaving comments. You can turn off comments if you don’t want feedback.
Sharing
By default, your reels can be reshared by others. You can disable sharing to prevent them from being reposted.
Reels vs Stories Privacy
It’s important to note that reels and stories have separate privacy settings. Just because someone can see your stories does not mean they can also view your reels.
So you may need to adjust reel privacy specifically, even if your stories are already set to your desired visibility level.
Making Reels Private by Default
If you prefer to have new reels be private by default, go to your reels settings and choose “Only Me” as the default visibility.
You can still change it individually for any reel you want to share more openly. But this makes private your baseline.
Summary
Facebook gives you granular control over who can view your reels. Take advantage of the options to set privacy levels appropriately for each reel.
Check the insights to see how different groups are engaging with your content. And consider whether public, friends, custom lists, or private is the best fit for each reel you share.