How do you hide tags and mentions in Instagram stories?

Recently, Instagram announced its new stories feature to engage the audience. Sharing moments, improving the overall followers’ engagement, and even brand promotions were drastically improved. People tag and mention their audience on posts, comment sections, and even in stories.

Still, there are some points where you want to hide these mentions and tags in Instagram stories for a lot of reasons. If you also want to make your tags and mentions private, this blog covers all the information about a variety of methods you can opt to hide these mentions and tags in your stories. This way, you will enjoy the tagging feature of Instagram, and still, the aesthetics of your posts will not be affected!

Understanding Tags and Mentions

Stop! Yes! Stop right here! Before dwelling further into the ways how to keep your tags mentioned secret, let’s have a quick look at tags and mentions.

• Tags: Tags are often used to identify some other Instagram people who are there in your photos and videos as well. Simply, tags refer to a clickable link that automatically redirects you to a person’s Instagram profile.
• Mentions: While mentions refer to an Instagram user in your stories who usually appears as @username. When you mention someone over your story or post, that person receives a notification from Instagram, and they even get a link to the post you have mentioned.

Although mentioning or tagging someone over your profile post or story can be a great way to improve your profile’s engagement, appreciate your audience, and even initiate further collaborations, it can still sometimes make your stories messy and even divert your audience’s attention from the main content you are willing to engage them with.

Why Hide Tags and Mentions?

1. Aesthetic Appeal: Imagine a clean and clear story! These kinds of photos and videos are usually more appealing to the audience.
2. Focus on Content: When you hide your tags and mentions over your stories, it keeps your audience stuck to the content and even lessens the chances of distracting their focus to somewhere else.
3. Professionalism: Businesses often prefer to hide tags and mentions to create an overall professional look for their business posts and stories.

Methods to Hide Tags and Mentions

Use the Color Matching Tool

On the Instagram platform, users can mix and match and bring on the creativity factor to blend the tags and mention text with the picture or video background. To keep your audience focused on your content while keeping the tags and mentions secret, you can smartly do this by:

1. Create Your Story: Choose any picture or video from your gallery and upload it.
2. Add the Tag/Mention: Now type “@username,” or you can add a tag, too.
3. Select the Text: It’s time to highlight your text by selecting it.
4. Use the Color Picker: In the editing section, you will see an eye dropper-shaped icon commonly referred to as a color picker tool. Choose the color from your picture’s background, and now smartly blend and read your story. This way, you can easily hide your tag and mention and keep your audience engaged with your content.

Resize and Move

Another thing you can do to hide your tags and mentions over your Instagram stories is to resize and move them:

1. Create Your Story: Choose any picture or video from your gallery and upload it.
2. Add the Tag/Mention: Now type “@username,” or you can add a tag, too.
3. Resize: Just like we zoom in and zoom out the text, you can pinch it to make the text size smaller or larger.
4. Move: The next step is to grab this text content to some corner of your post where it’s less noticeable.

Use Stickers or Emojis

Apart from resizing or blending your text with the image, you can hide your tags and mentions with emojis and stickers as well.

1. Create Your Story: Choose any picture or video from your gallery and upload it.
2. Add the Tag/Mention: Now type “@username,” or you can add a tag too.
3. Resize and Place: If you want to resize the tag, you can either do it or leave it.
4. Add a Sticker/Emoji: Now go to the stickers icon and place it over your mention or tag. Leave the emoji or sticker, and that’s it! The text is covered, so your audience is focused on your content as well.

Using GIFs

Next is to use GIF to hide the person’s username or profile text you have used as a tag or mention in your stories.

1. Create Your Story: Choose any picture or video from your gallery and upload it.
2. Add the Tag/Mention: Now type “@username,” or you can add a tag too.
3. Resize and Place: If you want to resize the tag, you can either do it or leave it.
4. Add a GIF: The next step is to select the GIF icon. Here, you can choose the one that perfectly fits your story context, and here you go!

Using Drawing Tools

Last but not least, a way to keep your tags and mentions secret is by using the exceptional “Drawing tool” that comes as a bonus feature of the Instagram platform.

1. Create Your Story: Choose any picture or video from your gallery and upload it.
2. Add the Tag/Mention: Now type “@username,” or you can add a tag, too.
3. Use the Drawing Tool: It’s time to draw! Select the “Drawing tool” icon. Now, you can amuse your audience with your drawing skills while keeping the tags secret!

Tools and Apps for Advanced Editing

If you are not satisfied with the Instagram editing feature and still want to elevate your story level with professional and quality editing tools, there are a lot of apps and software out there that can help you out in this process.

1. Canva: Canva is the life savior in today’s editing world! With its amazing design tool features, users can create jaw-dropping stories while hiding the mentions and tags.
2. Over: Another tool is Over. There is a varied range of editing tools and software that ultimately improves your Instagram story engagement while blending your tags in the background.
3. Unfold: Still, a few want some other tool apart from Canva and Over to edit their stories, so go to Unfold! Whether it’s countless design tools and templates, users can create amazing stories to boost their profile visibility.

How Do I Turn Off Mentions on Instagram?

Sometimes, to take a break and avoid unnecessary “Mentions,” users turn off their mentions feature on the Instagram platform. To do so, look for the menu icon. You will easily find this at the top right corner of your profile period from here. Go to the settings tab and then search for the privacy features there.

Under the Privacy section,  you will see the settings option for “Mentions.” Here, you can easily do whatever settings you want, whether you want to allow everyone to mention you in their stories, or just your followers, or even no one! Select the option that fits you well, and that’s it.

Conclusion

By hiding your mentions and tags over your Instagram stories, users can improve their overall content engagement and maintain professional visibility! No matter what tools you use, whether the built-in Instagram ones or third-party apps, you can smartly keep your audience focused on the content. This way, they can resonate better with you.

Pick up your mobile, post a new story while hiding the tags and mentions, and take your Instagram profile engagement to the next level today!