How to Turn Off Instagram Notifications for One Person

The short version: Instagram has no direct "turn off notifications for one person" button, but muting them does the job just as well. Go to their profile, tap the three dots, choose Mute, then pick Posts, Stories, Messages or all three. Nothing gets deleted, nobody gets blocked, and they never find out.

Why people search for this and what they want

Most people typing this into Google don't want to unfollow anyone. They want one specific person's constant posting, story spam, or endless DM pings to stop showing up on their phone, without the social fallout of a block or an unfollow that someone always notices. Say you run a small business account and one supplier keeps tagging you in six stories a day about stock updates. You still need the relationship. You just don't need the notification every time.

The feature you want is called Mute, and it's buried under the three-dot menu rather than in the main settings, which is probably why so many people assume it doesn't exist.

Step by step: muting one person's notifications

• Open the profile of the person you want to quiet down.
• Tap the three dots in the top right corner.
• Tap Mute.
• Choose from Posts, Stories and Messages, you can toggle any combination.
• Confirm, and that's it, no notification, no alert to them.

On the app, this takes about 15 seconds. You can also mute someone from inside a chat thread: open the conversation, tap their name at the top, and select Mute Messages. That's the exact route if the problem is specifically their DMs flooding your lock screen rather than their posts.

A worked example

Imagine you run a boutique fitness studio in Manchester and one client, a very enthusiastic regular, sends you eight or nine voice notes a day asking about class times, discounts and whether you saw her latest gym selfie. You like her, you don't want to block her, but your phone buzzes constantly. Here's what fixes it: go to her profile, tap the three dots, mute Stories and Messages but leave Posts on, so you still see her main feed content in your scroll but the phone stops lighting up every time she sends a voice note. Problem solved in under a minute, and she never knows.

The uncomfortable bit nobody says out loud

Muting doesn't fix the relationship problem that made you want to mute someone in the first place. If a colleague, a client or a family member is messaging you so much that you need to silence them, muting is a sticking plaster, not a conversation. I'd rather you mute someone than let your phone ruin your focus all day, but if it's a client who's messaging you fifteen times about something that should be one email, muting their notifications just delays the moment you need to set a boundary with them directly. Most articles on this topic treat mute as a permanent fix. It's not. It's a buffer that buys you time to decide what you want from that relationship.

Mute versus restrict versus block: know the difference

These three get confused constantly, and picking the wrong one causes more problems than it solves:

• Mute stops their notifications reaching you. They have no idea. You still follow each other, still see each other's content if you go looking for it.
• Restrict is for when someone's behaviour is bordering on harassment. Their comments on your posts become visible only to them, and their messages go to a filtered request folder you can ignore.
• Block is the nuclear option. They can't see your profile, can't message you, and in most cases they'll notice fairly quickly.

For a simple "I just don't want the notifications" problem, mute is almost always the right tool. Restrict and block are for when the issue is behaviour, not volume.

What muting doesn't do

Muting one person doesn't stop them appearing in group chats you're both in, so if the real source of noise is a shared group rather than a one-to-one, you'll want to look at how to mute an Instagram group chat separately, since that's a different setting entirely. And if you've decided you'd rather quietly exit a group than mute it, there's a clean way to leave an Instagram group chat without notifying anyone that works alongside this.

It also doesn't stop you seeing their activity if you actively go to their profile. Muting only silences the automatic push notification, it doesn't hide them from existence. If you want to stop seeing someone's content when you scroll, muting Posts does help with that specifically, but if you're still following them you'll occasionally see their comments elsewhere on the platform.

Common snags and how to sort them

Three things trip people up when they try this:

• The mute doesn't seem to apply, usually because notifications were already off at the device level rather than the app level. If none of your Instagram notifications are working on an Android phone, that's a different fix entirely, and worth checking against why Instagram notifications stop working on Android before you assume muting failed.
• You mute the wrong account because two people share a near-identical username. Double check the profile photo and bio before you tap mute.
• You want to unmute later and can't find how. Go back to their profile, tap the three dots again, and the option will now say Unmute instead of Mute. Same journey in reverse.

When mute isn't the right answer at all

If the actual issue is that someone's added you to a group chat you never wanted to be in, built with people who don't even follow you, muting their individual notifications won't help much because the noise is coming from the group dynamic, not from them personally. In that case it's worth understanding how group chats work with non followers on Instagram first, because the fix might be leaving the thread rather than muting one person in it.

And if what's really bothering you is a small interaction habit rather than volume of notifications, like someone double-tapping every message you send instead of replying, that's not a mute problem either, that's worth knowing about through how message reactions work on Instagram so you understand what you're seeing before you decide it's annoying enough to silence.

A quick word on business accounts

If you run a business page and you're muting clients or customers to protect your own focus, build in a replacement system before you mute anyone important. Set specific times you check messages, tell key contacts what those times are, and use an auto-reply if Instagram's business tools allow it in your region. Muting without a replacement habit just means you forget to reply for three days and the client thinks you're ignoring them on purpose.

This guide is part of my Instagram Help: 81 Guides to Followers, Hashtags, Money, Accounts and Fixes.

Frequently asked questions

Does muting someone on Instagram tell them you've done it?

No. There is no notification, badge or indicator sent to the other person when you mute them. They can only work it out indirectly, for example if you stop liking their posts, but the mute action itself is completely silent.

Can I turn off notifications for one person's Stories only, not their posts?

Yes. When you tap Mute on their profile, you get separate toggles for Posts, Stories and Messages, so you can mute just one category and leave the others active.

Will muting someone affect what they see on my profile?

No. Muting is one directional and invisible. They still see your posts, stories and can still message you exactly as before, the mute only changes what you see and get notified about, not what they experience.

How do I undo a mute if I change my mind?

Go back to their profile, tap the three dots in the top corner, and tap Unmute. It reverses instantly and there's no limit on how many times you can mute and unmute the same person.