How to Turn Off Profile Views on TikTok and What Happens When You Do

The funny thing about profile views is that while you enjoy getting information about who visited your profile, it lets others find out when you visit their profile. It can be a bitter pill to swallow for you if you are anything like us. But things have to be fair in the world, right? Anyway, it matters to TikTok that the platform is about being just and unbiased.

Since you wish to know more about profile views before deciding whether to use it, we come bearing answers to the most commonly asked question about TikTok profile views.

If I turn off profile views on TikTok, will they know?

Good news! They won’t know at all if you have profile views turned off or on. Wonder how? It is simple, profile views is a dedicated feature that gives you the list of all the users who visited your profile over 30 days.

This list is exclusive and private to each user. In more lucid terms, only you can see who viewed your profile. So, if you turn off profile views, you won’t be able to see who visited your profile. At the same time, you won’t show up in other people’s profile views list if you visit them with the feature disabled from your end.

They are not going to know! How will they know, anyway? They are not mind-readers or oracles who can detect or predict the activity if you indeed visit them. This is all thanks to the fair principle followed by the profile views feature to either allow both parties to view visiting activities when both have it enabled or block it from both if either has it disabled.

To conclude, if you have the profile views feature turned off following when you visit someone’s profile, they won’t know about the activity (of the visit). Similarly, if they visit your profile during this period, they won’t be able to detect that you have the feature disabled. The result is that you will not be notified of their visit either.

How does the profile views feature work?

Profile views may be likened to a two-way glass. When you enable profile views, you get to see who takes a peek at your profile through the ‘glass’ and when you take a peek at theirs, they will also be able to know about it.

Very fair, isn’t it? Perhaps not always, because if you are a silent lurker on the app who does some harmless but frequent profile visiting, then the profile views feature might have you endure quite a bit of embarrassment.

Suppose you decide to turn off profile views, you might wish to switch out the glass for a one-way mirror that grants you an unrestricted view of the other side while the other gets blocked from viewing your profile. However, things do not work that way under profile views on TikTok.

When you turn off profile views, not only do you hide your footprints when you visit someone’s profile, you do not get informed if they visit yours.

Profile views on TikTok gives you a list of all the users who visited your profile over 30 days. It is updated daily in this fashion to show the visitors’ history over the predetermined time range.

What happens when you turn off profile views on TikTok?

When you turn off profile views, you deny yourself the knowledge about who viewed your profile while concomitantly covering your track of visiting someone else’s profile.

All your previous profile visit history also immediately disappears making your name disappear from others’ profile views list. As long as you successfully refrain from turning it back on until 30 days have passed since your last visit to their profile, your visiting history will become an irretrievable and untraceable history.

What happens when you turn on Profile view on TikTok?

When you turn on profile views, you gain access to a list of all visitors to your profile. At the same time, you also allow yourself to appear on others’ profile views list if you visit their profile.

The feature can be enabled and disabled as you wish; the profile views is a plain list of usernames arranged in the order of activity in reverse chronological order without any additional information like the date or time of visiting– that is, the most recent visitor’s username appears at the very top of the list followed by the one before.

Usernames won’t be repeated twice in the list, so, if you visit someone’s profile two days after the first visit, only the most recent visit shall be accounted for on the list based on the position.

Is there any way to get past profile views on TikTok?

If the feature is enabled by both you and the visitor or the one whose profile you visited, then there is no bypass to escape the prying eyes of the profile views feature.

However, there are two ways to block this feature — one is obviously turning off profile views and the other is blocking the other party. However, these can be considered desperate measures taken to hide the footprints of an unwanted or accidental profile visit.

How long does your name stay in someone’s Profile view history?

When you go and view someone’s profile on TikTok, your name will appear inside their Profile view history if you and this person both have profile views enabled. Your name will reside in their Profile view history for up to 30 days since you last viewed their profile. Similarly, you will continue to see names of people who check your TikTok profile inside your Profile view history for up to 30 days since someone last visited your profile.

Since this list is updated based on who viewed your profile more recently, your name may appear at the top of their list if you revisit their profile from time to time. Your name will only be removed automatically if you don’t visit this person’s profile for over 30 days.

If you wish to revisit someone’s profile without appearing in their Profile view history, you will need to turn on profile views on your TikTok account. When doing that, you must remember that this action will also prevent you from viewing who has visited your profile in the last 30 days.

Do my previous views count if I disable Profile view history later?

Profile view history only works when both the viewer and the profile that’s being viewed have the profile views feature enabled on their respective accounts. If you visited someone’s profile with profile views enabled on your account, your name will be visible inside this person’s Profile view history for up to 30 days since you last visited or for as long as you have profile views enabled for your account.

In case you forgot to turn on profile views when checking out someone on TikTok, you can prevent your name from showing up on their Profile view history by turning off profile views on your profile. Since the app only shows a list of people who actively use profile views, your name will disappear from someone’s view history, even if you disable profile views on your profile at a later time.

This means none of your preview views of a profile would count or appear inside someone’s Profile view history if you disable profile views on your account in time before they check their history.

How to turn on or off profile views on TikTok

The following guide should help you enable and disable profile views on your TikTok profile.

Turn on profile views on TikTok

To enable profile views on your account, open the TikTok app on your phone and tap on the Profile tab at the bottom right corner to go to your Profile.

When your profile loads up on the next screen, tap on the footprint icon (or the eye icon in older TikTok versions) at the top right corner. This icon will be on the left side of the three-lined menu button.

In the screen that appears, tap on Turn on at the bottom to enable profile view history.

You will be redirected to a page that holds the list of your profile visitors in the past 30 days. Here, you will see people who have visited your profile from new to old, meaning those who have checked your profile recently will appear at the top followed by other viewers from the past. People who have visited your profile multiple times will only appear once and that’ll be obvious if their name constantly appears around the top of your Profile view history list.

You will also get a notification in the Inbox when you activate the function on TikTok. If you tap it, you will be directly taken to the visitors’ history page shown in the screenshot above.

The screenshot below shows how a profile appears on your visitors’ history.

Turning on profile views history means that your profile will also show up on the visitor history of other users who have enabled the same feature for 30 days.

You remain in someone’s profile views list for 30 days after you get automatically flushed out. So, if you want to remove yourself from someone’s profile views list during this period, one of the ways is to turn off profile views.

Turn off profile views on TikTok

You can disable profile views on your TikTok account from within the TikTok app. For this, open the TikTok app on your phone and tap on the Profile tab at the bottom right corner to go to your profile.

Inside your TikTok profile, tap on the footprint icon (or the eye icon in older TikTok versions) at the top right corner. This icon will be on the left side of the three-lined menu button.

Inside the profile views screen, tap on the cogwheel icon at the top right corner.

To disable profile views on your TikTok account, turn off the Profile view history toggle and then tap on the X icon to close this screen.

Upon completion, the profile view history setting will revert to the original state; to reinstate the function, tap Turn On.

I can’t find the footprint icon. How else do I turn on profile views?

The profile views option should appear inside your TikTok profile at the top of the screen. In case, you don’t see the footprint (or eye) icon inside your profile, there’s another way to access this option on the app. For this, open the TikTok app on your phone and tap on the Profile tab at the bottom right corner.

When your TikTok profile shows up on the screen, tap on the 3-lines icon at the top right corner.

Now in the menu that opens at the bottom, tap on Settings and Privacy.

Inside Settings and Privacy, select Privacy.

On the Privacy screen, scroll down and tap on profile views under “Interactions”.

Here, turn on the Profile view history toggle at the top.

You should now be able to see the footprint icon at the top of your TikTok profile to access the list of people who have visited your profile.

Hope that settles all your inhibitions about the feature and also answers all your questions. If you have any queries, please drop them in the comments!

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