How to hide friends on VK: step-by-step instructions with screenshots and explanations

The VKontakte social network has been the most popular in Russia and the CIS for more than 10 years: more than 30 million people use VK per day, and in total more than 510 million accounts are registered. Accordingly, most active users have an extensive list of friends. VKontakte also allows you to hide a person from the list of visible friends.

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Why do they hide friends?

The reasons vary from person to person, but the general trend comes down to the security motive: VK is used by many people who may have dishonest intentions. These include scammers, spammers, hooligans, and so on.

Accordingly, flexible privacy settings that allow you to hide the list of users from a potentially unwanted circle of people can protect loved ones from considerable problems. In some cases, the list of users is hidden for personal reasons.

For example, introverts or people in relationships often do this. Especially flexible privacy settings will be useful to famous people, “stars”, whose official accounts collect tens of millions of subscribers.

Why do users hide their friends?

The reasons for a user wanting to hide some people from prying eyes may be different. In my opinion, most often such a decision is associated with some personal motives and considerations. Let's look at some of them:

An attempt to protect yourself from fraudulent activities. Through a social network, you can find out a lot of private information about the user: from place of work to phone number and residential address. This can also be done through the pages of relatives or colleagues. Moreover, their albums may contain photos of you together, which other users do not need to see. After hiding such friends, it will be more difficult for attackers to collect more information about you.
Some of the friends are on bad terms with each other, but the user continues to communicate with both. In order not to offend any of them, the latter decides to use the hiding function.
Reluctance to “light up” your second fake page. Often people have not one VKontakte account, but several. At the same time, they add all their profiles as friends for convenience. There is no need for others to know about this fact.
Sometimes there is intrigue. Attempts to lead a double life, unfortunately, are not uncommon in our time.
There is a possibility that someone will want to send unpleasant messages or compromising files to your friends. In this situation, your reputation can suffer greatly. Therefore, many find it useful to protect themselves from such actions by prudently hiding the pages of loved ones from their friends list.
A simple reluctance to share information about friendly relations with certain people. There are situations when among friends or relatives there is a person who does not have a very good reputation in society. And when a friend request comes in, it seems rude to reject it.
Some people are quite secretive, so they try to indicate a minimum of information on VK. Including close friends.

Whatever the reason for hiding users, a person can do so at any time they wish. Fortunately, this process is quite simple and does not take much time.

How to hide a friend on VK from a computer?

VKontakte developers care about their users and have introduced a very flexible and convenient privacy setting that you can adapt to your needs.

We remove one or more friends (up to 30 people)

Instructions:

Log in to your social network account (if you have not logged in).
Click on the avatar in the upper right corner of the screen (repeats the profile initials).
In the drop-down window, click on the “Settings” item.
A list of all settings will open.
Pay attention to the right block and select the “Privacy” tab.
Next, you need to select “Who is visible in the list of my friends and subscriptions.”
A window will open with the ability to select friends.
Now just mark the desired contacts and save the changes.

Visual illustration of actions:

Note:
It is most optimal to use a computer and the full version of the VKontakte website to set up privacy, since the mobile version of the social network does not have the ability to configure the hiding of friendly contacts (only through the “For Computer” version). However, the alternative method is less convenient in practical terms.

It is also possible to hide friends through the official VK mobile client using a similar algorithm, but if through a computer you can hide a specific contact in one click, then through the mobile application for a comparable result you will have to enter the full page address (the so-called personal identifier), which will significantly complicate procedure.

More than 30 people

Officially, VKontakte does not allow you to hide more than 30 friends (the maximum number that can be hidden through privacy settings). However, there is a way by which you can bypass this limitation and hide your VKontakte friends. The instructions are as follows:

Go to the VK page and open the “Friends” section.
Press the hotkey combination using your keyboard CTRL+SHIFT+I.
A debugging window will open in the form of a console (right block).
Go to "Console".
Now copy the special debugging code to bypass the basic limitation. Since debugging codes are constantly updated in accordance with the elimination of vulnerabilities by the programming team, you must search for specific code on the Internet yourself.
After entering the appropriate debugging code, press "Enter" and type "itr(30, true)".
Press "Enter" again.
This way you will remove the basic limit of 30 people and will be able to hide more friends.

Visual illustration of actions:

Note:
This method is not official and uses the vulnerability of the social network. Since the developers and team of programmers constantly fix such vulnerabilities, it is far from a fact that using this method it will be possible to hide the required number of friends by entering a “universal” debugging code. However, in 2020, the console as a tool allows you to relatively successfully bypass the basic VKontakte restriction on hiding friends.

All available friends

The principle of hiding all existing friends is based on the previous method of entering a script through the console (this way you can hide or add any number of hidden friends to VK).

New way 2021

In one of the latest updates, the developers introduced into the Vkontakte social network the ability to close an account from outside contacts who are not included in the list of friends, similar to Odnoklassniki. There is only one difference: “OK” for a closed profile requires a donation, that is, the function is paid, while “VK” allows you to close a profile for free. The instructions are as follows:

Go to your profile page or log in (only if necessary).
Click on the avatar at the top of the screen (duplicates initials and profile image in miniature).
Select "Settings" from the drop-down menu.
Find the "Privacy" section.
Get to the "Other" item.
Profile Type tab.
Click and change the public account to private.
Save your changes.

Visual illustration of actions:

Note:
The method is most effective if the account has a small number of friends: in the case when the number of friends exceeds 100 people or more, the usefulness of this method is questionable due to the fact that private information is still available to a large number of people. Additionally, you can scroll through the list of friends and exclude the most dubious contacts.

Is it possible to see a user's hidden friends?

Officially, the VKontakte website does not provide the ability to view hidden friends. But, if you are smart, it is quite possible to recognize them. There are several ways that work. They all require patience and diligence.

One of the simple options involves using third-party programs. They are available in large numbers on Android and iPhone phones.

But in this case, there is a possibility of running into scammers.

The fact is that such platforms require account login information - login and password. In addition, when using untested programs, there is a possibility that the result will be unreliable. It is almost impossible to insure yourself against unwanted consequences.

Another method involves a manual search. But in this case you will have to partially rely on intuition. First, you should monitor the suspect's page for likes and comments from users who are not on your friends list. They may well be among those who are hidden. But it is not possible to verify this.

If you want to find out whether there are specific people on the list of hidden friends, you can use one more trick. You need to find this person through a search engine. Next to it will be a list of mutual friends. Among them there may be a person who is hiding friendship with the person he is looking for.

How to check the result

After a certain number of friends have been added to the hidden category, it is impossible to immediately understand what the account looks like through the eyes of another, stranger. But the developers have provided special functionality that will allow you to look at your own page through the eyes of a “guest” account. The instructions are as follows:

Go to “Settings” in any convenient way.
Go to your privacy settings via the Privacy tab.
Scroll to the end of the list.
At the bottom, at the very end, there should be the inscription “You can see how other users see your page.”
The text is formatted as a hyperlink. Click on it.
You will be redirected to the profile page, but now at the top, under the “search” column, there will be a notification “This is how an unfamiliar user sees your page.”
At the top right of the screen there is a “Return to Settings” tab.
Click on it to go back.
Now exit the settings and use the page as normal.

Visual illustration of actions:

A new way to hide friends

If the user needs to hide more than 30 friends, then difficulties may arise. After all, there are no official functions that satisfy the desires of such people. However, the new version of Vkontakte has an interesting alternative.

Now you can add people to your favorites. This feature allows you to track any profile changes.

The algorithm of actions will be as follows:

Initially, you should go to “Settings” and go to the “General” section. In it, select the item “Customize the display of menu items”.
Read also: What is “kek” in VK? Meaning in youth slang
A window will open containing a list of positions. Among them, you need to select “Bookmarks” by checking the box next to it. Then you should save the changes.
The next step is to find a person to bookmark. To do this, you can use the VKontakte search engine.
Having visited the page of the desired person, you need to select the “Actions” section under his photo.
Among the proposed options, you must select “Add to bookmarks.”

As a result of these actions, the user will always be in a separate menu item. Already from bookmarks you can go directly to a person’s page and perform any actions. You can remove it from there in the same way.

For other users, its presence in bookmarks will go unnoticed. This option is considered a good replacement for hidden friends.

You can add a user to a separate tab in another way - by adding him to the blacklist. But in this case, he will not be able to visit your page and leave messages. The expediency of such an action is not always present.

Additional privacy options

VKontakte privacy settings are not limited to the option of hiding friends. In addition, the following settings are available:

Setting up access to photos.
Setting up access to group subscriptions.
Adjusting access to audio and video.
Regulating access to gifts.
Setting the visibility of hidden friends to a limited number of people.
Adjusting access to the account page.
Setting up access control for tags on photos.
Adjusting access to personal messages.
Adjusting access to audio-video calls.
Adjust notifications and invitations to applications.
Adjusting access to the ability to invite to group conversations.

How to reveal hidden users to other people

VKontakte allows you not only to hide your friends from prying eyes, but also to select several people who will be able to see your secret friendship. This can be done both on a computer and through an application on a mobile phone. To do this, follow these steps:

Open settings and click on “Privacy”.
In the “My Page” section, select the “Who sees my hidden friends” column.
The program will offer one of four options to choose from: “All friends”, “Only me”, “Hidden friends” and “Some friends”.

By selecting the latter option, you can manually add specific people or lists of users who will be allowed or denied access to view your hidden friends.

FAQ

How to show invisible friends to a certain circle of people?

Use the “Who sees my hidden friends” tab and edit the parameter as necessary through the “Some friends” or “Some friend lists” item. This way, hidden VK friends will be available to selected accounts.

Visual illustration of actions:

Note:
If you select the “Hidden” item, then users added to the exclusion list will see themselves in normal mode when viewing their account.

Will a person find out that I hid it?

By default, a hidden contact is displayed in normal mode, however, it all depends on personal privacy settings: if you substitute “Only me” in the “Who sees my hidden friends” tab, the hidden person can guess that he was hidden .

How can I hide my friends list for just one person?

Use the “Who can see my hidden friends” tab and check the “All friends except...” option.

Note:
It will not be possible to hide access for a personally selected third-party user.

Who and how can see the list of hidden VK friends?

It all depends on your personal privacy settings, thus:

Only Me Allows you to limit access to the visibility of hidden friends.
Some friend lists Allows you to configure access to a specific group of friends (colleagues, relatives, etc.).
All friends except... Allows you to exclude one or several friends (the rest will be allowed access).
Hidden Friends Allows you to make the list visible to all hidden friends so that they are not aware of the fact of hiding.
All friends Allows you to regulate access to the hidden list of friendly contacts.

Why doesn't VK allow you to hide a large number of friends?

This step is due to the policy of the VKontakte administration to increase the overall level of security on the Internet. For example, in this way the social network fights scammers and unscrupulous people so that they do not abuse privacy settings.

How to hide VK friends via phone?

You can follow the same instructions in the mobile app. For convenience, we have prepared screenshots for you of where to find privacy settings in the mobile version of VKontakte.

Is it possible to hide more than 30 friends?

Separately, let’s talk about the limit when hiding friends – for now the network allows you to hide up to 30 friends from the general list. However, scripts are actively offered on the network that increase this number to infinity. We could post them, but they always don't work. They are always fixed and some new methods are rolled out - but in the end you can’t fool the developers, no more than 30 and that’s it. I honestly checked the last few scripts on Chrome - none of them work, they give errors . If it worked for you, write in a comment.