How does Close Friends work on Instagram?

1. Open your settings and, under “Who can see your content,” choose Close Friends.
2. Tap Select next to each person you want on the list.
3. When you share a Story, Reel or Note, choose Close Friends as the audience instead of all your followers.

Edit the list whenever you like. Nobody is notified when you add them or when you take them off; people you remove simply stop seeing what you share to the list.

• A “Close friends” label on the Story, Reel or Note, which is how they learn they’re on your list.
• A green ring around your profile photo, which Instagram says they may also see.
• Not the list itself. Only you can see it, and no one can request to be added. But if someone on the list likes, comments on or shares your Close Friends Reel, the others on the list can see their username and how they interacted.

Tip: Anyone on the list can still screenshot or screen-record what you share, so a small audience isn’t the same as a private one.

Because the list is hand-picked and quiet, accounts use it for an inner circle: a first look at a product drop for repeat customers, rough cuts for a few trusted followers, or extra Stories for members of a paid community.

The catch is that everything is manual. Each name is added and removed by hand, and Close Friends has no payments or expiry dates, so running a paid list means tracking who has paid yourself. Where it’s available to you, Instagram’s Subscriptions feature handles billing and subscriber-only content instead.

Replies to a Close Friends Story land in your DMs like replies to any other Story. That makes the list a handy place to ask a small group a question, such as which of two colours to restock.