You don't have to let visible like counts dictate your strategy or your wellbeing. For Australian social managers, influencers and small-business owners, the pressure of public "ig likes" — across posts and Reels on mobile and desktop — can fuel anxiety, skew creative decisions and complicate client conversations. Hiding likes feels like a quick fix, but it raises real questions: will it break your reporting, confuse partners, or make moderation and DMs harder to manage?
This guide is a practical, step-by-step playbook to take that toggle without losing control: exact steps to hide and unhide likes on posts and Reels (desktop and mobile), clear answers on algorithm, reach and partnership impacts, an end-to-end workflow to measure engagement when likes are hidden, and automation tactics for comments, DMs and moderation to save time and protect brand safety — complete with troubleshooting and Australian use cases.
Why hide likes on Instagram: what it means and why Australian brands care
To be concise: hiding likes is a display setting that removes public numeric like counts from posts and Reels — it does not delete engagement. Likes, comments and saves still register on your account and remain available in Instagram Insights and third‑party analytics. In practice, hiding likes simply suppresses the visible totals that followers see in the feed or on a post’s public page.
How this works: when you hide likes on a post, the numeric tally is no longer shown to other users, but the underlying interactions still exist and are recorded. For example, a boutique in Melbourne can hide like counts so customers can still click Like while the visible number next to the image is hidden.
Australian brands commonly choose to hide likes for a few focused reasons:
Reduce emphasis on vanity metrics: remove the visible tally so teams and audiences focus on impact metrics (comments, saves, clicks, conversions).
Protect people: lower social‑comparison pressure for creators, staff and community members.
Limit bandwagon effects and gaming: make it harder for competitors or trolls to exploit visible popularity, and reduce impulse copying of trending but unvetted posts.
There are also brand‑safety and reputation benefits: hiding likes can blunt rapid spikes that attract copycats or amplify risky content, and it reduces visible signals that competitors or bad actors might use to manipulate perceived popularity. For instance, a food truck chain might hide likes to avoid sudden surges that encourage misleading endorsements or copycat behaviour.
Important: hiding counts doesn’t cut you off from data. Instagram Insights and Creator Studio still provide raw metrics, and analytics tools (including Blabla analytics) can surface engagement, automate moderation and convert conversations into measurable leads even when public like counts are hidden.
Practical tip: trial the setting on a test account or one campaign post, monitor comment quality, saves and conversion KPIs, and create moderation rules in Blabla to flag high‑intent comments and automate personalised replies so community health and sales tracking remain intact.
Benefits and trade-offs: what hiding likes will change (and what it won’t)
Having explained what "hiding likes" means and why Australian brands care, we now move from that conceptual rationale to the practical consequences. Below is a concise, signposted look at the main benefits and trade-offs of hiding public like counts — and the things that won’t really change.
Quick framing: hiding public like counts alters visible social proof but does not remove engagement or platform measurement. Brands, creators and audiences will feel the effects in different ways.
Benefits
Reduced social pressure: Users may feel less comparison-driven pressure when numeric like counts are not publicly displayed, which can improve wellbeing and encourage riskier creative choices.
Greater focus on content quality: Without an immediate like tally, audiences and creators may concentrate more on what a post says or shows rather than its popularity.
Potential for more authentic engagement: Comments, saves and meaningful interactions can become more prominent signals of interest, benefitting content creators who spark conversation.
Less visible influencer shopping list: Public ranking of posts by like count becomes harder to use as a blunt tool for valuing creators, which may push partnerships toward performance-based or qualitative measures.
Trade-offs
Loss of social proof at a glance: Brands and users lose an instant public indicator of popularity, which can make it harder to attract attention quickly or demonstrate immediate credibility to new audiences.
Practical challenges for creators and marketers: Influencer discovery and pitch decks that rely on visible like counts need to adapt; negotiations may require sharing private metrics or third‑party verification.
Potential short-term reporting friction: Teams used to glanceable public metrics will need new workflows to collect and present the underlying data (reach, saves, comments, engagement rate).
Possible migration to other visible metrics: If likes are hidden, other signals (comments, followers, views) may become the new shorthand for popularity — which could recreate similar social pressures.
What it won’t change
Platform measurement and algorithm signals: Hiding likes is primarily a display choice; Instagram still records engagement and uses those signals in its feed and recommendation algorithms.
Business insights remain available: Account holders and advertisers still have access to native analytics (likes, reach, impressions, saves) through Insights and Ads Manager.
Ad performance and paid reach: Paid promotion and ad delivery are unaffected in terms of how campaigns are measured and optimized.
Follower counts and other visible metrics: Follower totals and view counts (for Reels and videos) typically remain visible unless the platform explicitly changes those settings.
In short: hiding likes shifts what’s visible and how people perceive popularity, but it doesn’t erase the underlying data that brands and platforms use. The practical implication for Australian brands is a need to rely more on internal analytics and to be explicit with partners about which metrics will be used to evaluate success.
Step-by-step: how to hide and unhide likes on Instagram (posts, Reels, other people’s posts and desktop)
After covering the benefits and trade-offs, here’s a concise, non‑redundant overview of where and how like counts can be hidden or restored. This section summarizes the practical options; for full step‑by‑step instructions and troubleshooting (with screenshots), see Section 6 (Troubleshooting/FAQ).
Your new posts (posts & Reels)
Enable Instagram’s “Hide like and view counts” option for posts when composing content or from your Posts settings to prevent others from seeing like counts on future posts and Reels you publish.
Existing posts and Reels
You can hide like counts on individual, already-published posts or Reels via the post’s options menu. This affects that specific item without changing default settings for future uploads.
Other people’s posts
There is a setting to hide like and view counts from posts you see in your feed. Turning that on removes visible counts from others’ posts for your account only — it does not change what other users see.
Desktop / web
Web functionality is more limited than the mobile app. Some hide/unhide toggles are available when creating posts on the web, but for the most complete controls and per‑post options use the mobile app. See Section 6 for the exact web steps.
How to unhide
Reverse any of the above changes by switching the same toggle off or using the post’s options menu to restore counts. Unhiding can be done per post or as a global preference for future content.
What hiding does — and doesn’t — change
Hiding like counts changes only what is displayed; it doesn’t remove likes from the system, change engagement metrics available to the account owner (insights remain), or guarantee lower visibility in the algorithm.
For detailed, platform‑specific steps (exact menu names, tap/click sequences and screenshots) and common troubleshooting (e.g., toggles not appearing), refer to Section 6.
























































































































































































































