WeChat’s Moments feature allows users to share photos, videos, and text updates similar to Instagram Stories or Facebook posts. By default, your Moments posts are set to public, meaning anyone on WeChat can view your recent posts. If you want more privacy and wish to stop sharing your Moments publicly, there are a few easy ways to change the settings.
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Why You May Want More Privacy for Your Moments
There are a few reasons why you may want to stop publicly sharing your Moments posts with everyone:
- Privacy concerns – You may not want strangers or vague acquaintances seeing personal updates about your life.
- Limit audience – You may wish to only share certain Moments with close friends and family.
- Control visibility – You want control over who can view your content rather than everything being public by default.
Luckily, WeChat gives you options to limit visibility and sharing of your Moments feed.
How to Make Your Moments Private
Making your Moments private is simple and only takes a few taps in the WeChat app:
- Open WeChat and tap on the “Me” tab at the bottom
- Tap on “Settings”
- Select “Privacy”
- Tap on “Make My Moments Public” to toggle the switch off
This will make your Moments private so only your friends on WeChat can view them. Your posts will no longer be visible to the public or people searching WeChat.
Customize Visibility and Sharing
In addition to making all your Moments private, you can also customize visibility and sharing on a post-by-post basis:
Limit Viewing Timeframe
You can make older Moments posts invisible to your friends after a certain timeframe:
- Go to “Settings” > “Privacy”
- Tap “Visible to Friends”
- Select timeframe limit of 3 days, 6 months, or 1 year
Select Audience Per Post
When sharing a Moment, tap “Share With” to select specific friends or groups to share that post with. You can also select “Don’t Share With” to hide a post from certain contacts while keeping it visible to others.
Turn Off Notifications
If you don’t want to receive notifications when someone likes or comments on your Moments, toggle off the notifications in your WeChat settings.
Best Practices for WeChat Privacy
Beyond Moments, here are some other tips for maintaining privacy on WeChat:
- Review all privacy permissions in Settings and only enable what’s necessary
- Turn off location sharing and disable background collection of location data
- Use a nickname and minimal profile details rather than real name and info
- Create WeChat “Friend Groups” so you can easily share Moments with certain groups without making public
- Disable options for people to find your profile via phone number or WeChat ID
Conclusion
WeChat Moments provide a great way to share visual updates with your connections. However, oversharing or having all posts public by default raises privacy concerns for many users. Luckily, WeChat has robust privacy options to limit visibility of your Moments feed. By toggling your Moments to private, customizing audiences per post, and limiting visibility timeframes, you can share comfortably while maintaining control.
Review the privacy best practices outlined here as well to lock down your WeChat account. Pay particular attention to location permissions, friend searchability, and background data collection. With a few simple taps in Settings, you can stop sharing Moments publicly and tailor visibility to your comfort level.
