I’ve become more of a fan of Facebook over recent months (see my profile). They have made a number of improvements that I really like, and the number of people joining the service seems to just increase more and more over time. I’m really amazed at home many people you can find on it. I think they are well on their way to being the de facto White Pages of the Internet.
With that said, I don’t like the Wall feature of Facebook at all. For whatever reason, I’m just not real hip on anybody coming to my profile and just typing away. I’ve turned my wall off for a long time, and enough people have commented to me “Hey, you don’t have a wall! How did you do that?” that I thought I would share how to remove your wall.
Now, to be clear, we are not removing the wall per se. Facebook will not allow you to remove the Wall application. Instead, we are going to adjust privacy settings to hide the wall entirely. First, go to your privacy settings.
Now click on your profile.
In this screen, scroll down a ways and you will find the “Wall Posts” section. Simply change your settings to look like this. Uncheck the “Friends may post to my Wall” box and change the privacy option.
You could set this so that only you can write on your wall if you want. There are a couple of different options. I have it set like above which effectively removes the wall.
[Jan. 8, 2009: I've gotten some questions from people saying this doesn't work. I think the challenge is catching the result. I'm adding this section to help illustrate what this does.]
Result
Now that you have made this change you probably want to check to make sure it worked. This is a little hard on Facebook since it’s not terribly easy for you to see your profile as someone else. Facebook does have a feature that allows you to test this out, in your Profile Privacy settings, where you changed your wall privacy options, you can type the name of a friend and see your profile as they would see it. This works great for testing, particularly if you are using Facebook groups to assign privacy levels differently for various people.
You may be confused that even after these changes your profile will still have a tab called “Wall”. That is impossible to remove, per my earlier comment that we cannot really remove the Wall. It’s integral to the functioning of Facebook. All we did was remove the ability for people to write stuff on it.
Before these changes this is how a friend would see your wall.
Note the option to Write on the wall. After making these changes a friend sees your wall like this.
The option of writing on your wall is gone now.
Hi there,
thanks for your little tutorial. I did exactly as you said but for some reason the wall is still there. I can see it and everybody else can see it as well. Any idea why this happens?
Cheers
@AC,
I’m pretty positive that these changes will work. I added a section to this blog post with some before and after screenshots to show the effect of the changes. It’s a little hard to catch, particularly looking at it while logged in as you. See the “Result” section I added above.
Hi, when you remove your wall, you can still use updates (such as friend adds) to write on the wall by commenting on them. Is there any way to turn this off?
sick. it worked. you my friend, are a genious.
Thanks – but people can still write by hitting the ‘comment’ option after anything that comes up (such as ‘is now friends with…’ and typing away.
Is there no way of just deleting the whole wall thing altogether?
Fran,
I’ve looked pretty extensively to see if you can turn off the ability for people to comment on events on your wall and haven’t found anything. It seems that you cannot disable it.
You cannot remove your wall altogether since it is in essence the “logging” place where Facebook aggregates things. You can limit the number of things that get posted to your wall, and that would help keep the number of items that people could comment on down to a minimum.
OK, so this is great for making it so that no one may post to your wall. What I am interested in is privacy settings. I’d like to make it so that my “limited profile” friend group can’t see my wall at all, and that my “trusted friends” group can see all of it. The tab is still there, such that people in my limited group can see things that I don’t want them to see. For instance, I don’t want certain people to see when I post a link, or when I comment on a link, but I want my trusted group to be able to see that. Is there a way to do that? I notice that the “photos” tab gets removed when you set it for only specific groups. Why isn’t the wal ltab the same way?
Paulus,
I don’t believe that you can do what you are trying to do. The Wall serves a “system” purpose in Facebook, which is why you cannot remove it completely. Photos are not at the same level. In fact, Photos is really just a Facebook App that is pre-installed. Wall is something much more integral to Facebook, so the best you can do is just severely limit it.
Hi,
I have this kind of a problem: I can’t see the wall of one of my friends at all. He is still in my friends list but all I can see when I click on his profile is: info, photos and boxes. How is that possible?
hm. sorry to say but this article and some of these comments are just not correct. it’s entirely possible to completely remove the wall tab from everyone’s view, including your own:
1) click settings
2) click profile
3) make sure the checkbox for “friends may post to my wall” is actually *checked*
4) a drop down will appear if it’s checked, choose “no one.”
5) uncheck the checkbox & save
cheers
yes, that is true. you can also choose specific people that can’t see your wall.
How exactly would you accomplish that?
this is not correct. you cannot check the “friends may post to my wall” and at the same time select “no one.” unchecking the “friends may post to my wall” box afterward just unselects the “no one” box again. you can’t do both.
sorry to say it pal but i think u are wrong. ive done what you are saying and it simply doesnt work
I actually have been goofing around with locking down all privacy settings throughout my account and successfully managed to make the wall disappear altogether. It was some magic combination of privacy settings locked down completely, combined with placing all of my friends in a friends list and excluding that list from all account features … and, disabling wall notifications in my inbox. When you uncheck the wall, the system prompts you with two options, one of which is the removal of the wall. Pretty cool.
This is great! Talk about annoying…all these people writing comments on my facebook page. Is there a way to eliminate friends, too?
The title of your article: “How to Remove Your “Wall” on Facebook”
Your comment on Feb. 23rd: “You cannot remove your wall altogether since it is in essence the “logging” place where Facebook aggregates things. ”
…Since there are lots of people who want to completely remove the wall tab, you might want to rename this article so people don’t waste their time reading it. Maybe call it, “How to reduce the comments on your wall” or something to that effect.
Do you have any idea how to remove pictures from your photo wall. I can remove them from albums, but for some reason they will not let me remove them from my photo wall. It is driving me crazy. Can you help?
OMG I’m freaking out ….I posted a response to a friend that posted a comment on my wall, …..I meant for only her to see it ….I thought wall to wall was one on one – …..I’m concerned about who can see it – can her friends see it? Can mine see it? I have some ‘friends’ I just don’t want to see it, ……it was meant for me to her – When I responded to her ….will it show up on my wall?? …and can my friends see it? (told you I’m freaking out – I said it twice I know) but you seem pretty good at this, ……thanks for your help in advance!
Sue,
Did you immediately remove your wall post? (You can do that.) For correspondence that you wish to be private send a message (at the top of the facebook page – click on “Inbox” and go from there.
Thank you SO MUCH for this…. I just did as you outlined.. and now will wait and see how it plays out….. I, too, enjoy facebook for its ability to help us all connect, but I do NOT enjoy the endless drivel that people just pop in and put on my wall. No patience for that. And why would anyone visiting my page be interested in who took what personality test….. why everything we do has to be ‘reported’, documented, twittered……. I have no idea……my favorite ‘report’ goes to the woman in the stall next to me in the ladies’ dressing room of a dept. store, on her cell phone, giving a step by step account of the dress she was trying on… ‘well… it’s a little tight.. maybe I should get the next size…. but I really wish they had it in blue…. ‘ blah blah blah…. and to think the person on the other end had nothing else going on in HER life that she was the willing audience in all of this…. too much………………………….
Ok…. so yesterday (see post above)… I did as outlined…. and this AM just saw that there are many new and very recent (an hour ago) posts on my wall….. !*_!*@_*_@!)&^#(^!(()!_)!_)!!
I did as suggested.. to type in a friend’s name to see what they see on my profile.. and the option to ‘type something here’ is indeed gone, but then how did that same person’s post appear on my wall an hour ago?
HELP !! I was so relieved to think I found a way of eliminating this endless drivel…
SOMEONE OUT THERE>.. PLEASE HELP… let me know what I am missing..
Thanks
Thank you for the tips!
How can i remove my wall without disabling the posting function on my wall? ie. people can still post on my wall but others will not see what they wrote
Thanks a lot!
set your privacy settings so that who can view this is set to “only me. “
I was wondering if i could make som,eone able to post on my wall but not see posts other people have made on my wall?
Is this possible
Is there a way to HIDE posts/updates on your facebook wall without REMOVING them? As in, I want to save that history on my wall just don’t want it to be visible to everyone. Please let me know, thanks.
good morning, is there a way to remove comments, photos, etc., from friends and post from myself without losing them entirely. when i go to remove or hide a comment, it says i will lose a feed to these people, and i will no longer receive anything from them. i would like to just clean it up from day to day, keeping some and tossing other comments without losing them ? thank you
to remove the wall:
go for a walk, a swim, or
don’t join slavebook y’all
Nice Haiku!
I’ve made a group and blocked them from see most things on my wall but they can still see the events I have RSVP’d to, the mobile photos I uploaded, the causes I have donated to, etc. How can I remove these from their view?
I have a question ive been wondering about for quite a while. Hopefully someone can help me
Im a bit confused.
I have my family on their own group so they cannot see what everyone writes on my wall. However if I put it so they cant see my wall, they also cant write on my wall.
Is there a way to fix this, so they cant see what people write on my wall but they can still write on it at the same time.
thanks
To my knowledge you cannot allow people write permissions to your wall without also having read permissions.
Your question makes me wonder what these friends are writing on your wall that you don’t want your family to see.
Unfriend your family?
Is there a way to hide what certain friends write on their own walls? It comes up on my page when I log-in, and some of these people write the weirdest stuff. I don’t want to know what she had for breakfast, and I don’t care what he named his dog. I have to scroll through all of the crap to read the stuff I really do want to read from people who matter!
There’s the magic question . . . I don’t want to know what some of my friends write on their walls, but others I do. Is there a way to block what only some friends write on their own walls from posting on my own?
Nevermind . . . I was confusing News Feed with the Wall. Ok – clearly I don’t know what I doing. Here to learn.
Oh man, thanks! I’ve had some idiot following me around, “peeing” on my wall every time I write something. Now she can’t do this anymore! Now I can write with complete immunity!!! Freedom!!!
How can I delete a photo someone else posted on my wall/photo page? Thanks in advance!
I have made separate “friends lists” to try to tighten what who sees and after you do that “customize” thing it gives youthe option to view a preview of the page that those blocked from certain things like the wall however it looks like all they need to do is click on the wall tab and everything is still there. I think it is misleading to people who may think they have done what they need to do so that say your inlaw isnt nosily reading alllll your wall to walls going back as far as they can. it would be nice to do block just certain people from your wall activity. its a generational thing for alot of people. we just dont want EVERYONE in on all our wall babbles. I would rather not completely remove the wall though. I found these instructions to supposedly block certain people from certain things_ just I dont think it works.
here is the link for those instructions:
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/facebook-privacy-settings/
Is there a way to block “certain” friends from reading your wall?
If your information is THAT sensitive, is it not worth the time it would take to learn to make invisible what you dont want ppl to see? All i’m saying is, you are on this site and you dont know how to use it. I suggest you learn all about it before putting important information on it.
Simply put, it’s the internet. Even if you “hide” it. There will be a hack later where all the information is seen. Selective options in an online API doesn’t secure data forever.
Take your time, learn the settings and manage your data as you should.
My family keeps sending me friend request. I don’t accept, because I don’t want them seeing my wall. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, and I do want them to be able to have access to photos of my baby, family photos, etc… I just don’t want them knowing all my business on an hourly day by day basis, and I’m a 30+ year old. I can’t imagine why FB hasn’t come up with an option to hide the wall contents from certain people or groups, similar to the option to hide photo albums. Seems like this would be a no-brainer. Even separate walls for different groups would be great! Also I’d like the videos of my kid to have more security. Would like to hide them from those that I play FB games with like I do the photos. Maybe, I’m over looking something? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Charley
Okay, I’m going to try to answer as many questions as I can
There are several different things you can do with the wall. Reading/Posting writes for the wall are not separate. This means that someone can either: neither see NOR read [or] both see AND read.
Remove the wall application:
Go to “notifications” on the bottom right corner of the Facebook page. On the right hand side, where there are check boxes for notifications for different applications, uncheck the wall application. You will get two options. One is to mark those notifications as Spam. The other is to remove the wall application. I have not done this myself, so I don’t know how effective this is or if all your information is deleted, but I assume it is.
Prevent your all your friends from posting/reading posts that other friends make to your wall.
Go to Privacy–>Profile–>Wall Posts and selected “No One”. Save Changes
Keep certain people from being able to post/see your wall posts:
Make a list of that group of people (e.g., Family, Co-workers). Follow the same directions but select “Customize”. Choose the option “Only Friends”, and exclude (add to the “except” portion) the list you made. Save Changes.
Disallow certain people/ANYONE from seeing your status updates (includes history):
Make a list with (those certain people)/EVERYONE. Go to Privacy–>Profile–>Status and Links. Select “Customize”. Choose “Only Friends” and exclude the list you just made.
Make the wall invisible to anyone but yourself:
Both hide your status history (previous instructions) and prevent anyone from seeing/posting on your wall (see above). When friends load your page, they will be taken directly to your info page. Also, make sure that none of your applications have permission to post to your wall.
Disallow updates to post to your wall/stream:
Go to Privacy–>News Feed and Wall and uncheck all those little boxes. Save Changes.
Disallow applications to post to your wall/stream:
Go to the upper right hand portion of the toolbar, hover over “Settings”, and select “Applications”. In the drop-down menu, choose “Allowed to post”. Click “Edit Settings” for each item, choose the “Additional Permissions”, and make sure the “Publish” is unchecked. Click “Okay.”
I’m pretty sure those are all the instructions you need. You may have to do some tweaking–possibly involving deleting some applications altogether–to get it to work for you, but these are the general instructions. Since doing this, I haven’t had any posts or updated my profile in anyway, so of course, I’m not sure what I have missed.
<<<Profile–>Status and Links. Select “Customize”. Choose “Only Friends” and exclude the list you just made. >>>>
The above can no longer been done after the new changes on privacy settings in facebook.
Any idea how to do it now?
reading/posting *rights*, not “Writes”
I have managed to change the settings on my own personal wall so that people can only share my posts but cannot comment on them. However I have not been able to do the same for a fan page I administer. This is because when i log in to the fan page, the privacy settings pertain to my personal page. I cannot find a place where there are the same settings for the fan page. can you help?
Does anyone know how to reset password and eamil address for facebook? I do not know my password and I canceled my email address before I thought about the fact that I was use to having my facebook pull up on my cell phone and didn’t need my password. Help please.
Ive just managed to hide my wall compleatly. I can see it but none of my friends can. I created a friends list, moved everyone into it, then in the priacy tab > profile info you need to untick friends can post on my wall, set comments on post to “only me” & then the magic setting is “posts by me” & you need to set this to custom & exclude the friends list you created at the start.
The wall tab will now be invisable to anyone in this list
Actually scrap that, you don’t even need to create a list (if you want to hide the wall from everyone)
In profile information just set “posts by me” & “comments on posts” to “only me” & unselect “allow friends to post on my wall” = no wall tab on profile to anyone but you.
Hello
I’m having hard time to make my wall visible
in my case I want it visible
I have my private settings as “everyone
but its not visible for everyone
the only tab is available on my profile is ‘info’
not even the section about me, just the pages I’m fan of
I appreciate any help
thank you
facebook has changed the privacy so now when you don’t allow people to see posts you made (e.g. status updates etc.), your wall disappears altogether. i think this is a bug.
thnx thnx thnx!
I’m a bit confused. If it is impossible to remove the “wall” tab as it is an integral part of fb functioning, why is it that I have a friend with no visible wall tab? I used to be able to view this person’s wall and I doubt the would have intentionally excluded me. Could be some kind of malfunction? I have seen profiles that lack a “wall” tab before, as if one did not exist, but never on a friend’s profile. Thank you.
On my mine it only gives the option to not let friends post on my wall. The dropdown bar does not appear even if i uncheck it. Please Help
hey! this was really useful! thanks!
This didn’t work for me, I don’t have the “no one” option below “Friends can post to your wall? Any suggestions?
SB:
The new Facebook changed. Now just change “Posts by Me” to “Only Me” and uncheck where friends can post and also the “comments on posts by me” to “only me”. Not sure if the last two do anything but I disabled all three and now my friends don’t see that Wall tab.
You’ll still see it visiting your own profile but no one else will.
only the first one does it actually (removing the wall tab), the ‘posts by me’. i dunno why…
How do you keep people from viewing wall to wall posts? how do i delete my activiy stream from my wall? How do i change my wall to only show friends posts? Thank you for your help. This tutorial has helped a lot of us put. I thank you!
how to hide older posts in your fb profile?
I thought I was a pro with Facebook privacy settings, but there is one thing that i cannot get around.
If I accept/add a new friend, how can I keep them from seeing my previous status updates? Why isn’t there a way to “reset”, so that new friends can only see what is new as of the time they become my friend?
if i change the setting who may post on my wall to ‘no one’. will all my recent comments on the wall deleted?
Hello..
ive searched and searched for answers about my specific question and come up empty handed, hopefully you can answer this!
How do i put back on my Time stamp feed on my own profile wall?
I limited my wall so that no one can write on it, but i still would like to have the time on when i add and accept friend requests etc.
how do i do that?
kit
Can you disallow wall posts by friends but allow them to post in comments?
I would also very much like to do this. Any suggestions?