I’ll admit, I’ve had moments of wondering if someone (maybe an old friend or a past crush) has been quietly checking out my profile. This led me to wonder, can you see who views your Facebook profile? a few years back, I even tried one of those quiz apps that claimed it could tell me my top profile visitors. Spoiler alert: it was a dud and just spat out a list of some random friends, which obviously wasn’t any secret list of hidden stalkers.
Facebook’s official policy is clear: you cannot see who viewed your profile and there’s no built-in feature on Facebook that tells you who viewed your timeline, so if you find yourself digging through settings looking for this option, you won’t find anything.
This isn’t a new stance, either – since the early days of Facebook, the platform has never provided an audience-tracking feature for personal profiles in contrast to some other platforms like LinkedIn and TikTok.
The reasoning behind Facebook’s stance is primarily privacy: if every time you looked at someone’s profile they could find out, it would change how we all use Facebook and you might hesitate to click on people’s profiles.
What Can You See?
While you can’t see individual profile visitors, Facebook isn’t completely devoid of viewer-related information.
If you post a Facebook Story you can see who viewed your Story. Facebook will show you a list of viewers for each story, including friends and followers.
If you use Professional Mode on your personal profile, or if you manage a Facebook Page, you get some statistics about views – a Facebook Page admin can see metrics like how many people viewed the page this week, or how many accounts saw a particular post (reach/impressions). These numbers tell you roughly how many people in total looked at your content or profile, but they do NOT tell you who those people were. You won’t get names or individual identities, only aggregate data.
If you post videos (including Reels or Live videos) on Facebook, you’ll see a view count on each video but you won’t know exactly who those viewers are, only that your video reached that many people.
Debunking the Myths
You might have seen apps or browser extensions that promise to reveal your profile visitors, but the truth is that they do not work. Facebook’s system doesn’t allow external apps to fetch that information and these apps just show you a random list of people (often your most frequent interactions, like top friends or recent contacts) and pretend that’s your viewer list. In the worst cases, such apps are scams designed to steal your data or infect your device.
Another popular idea floating around is that you can right-click your profile, select View Page Source, and search for certain terms. I’ve actually tested this out of curiosity and while you can find those strings in the HTML code along with some ID numbers, those IDs are not a secret list of people who visited your profile – they appear to be related to your friends and who you interact with or chat with most.
A few years back, rumors circulated that Facebook briefly tested a “Who viewed my profile” button, but as of now, the answer to the question “Can you see who views your Facebook profile?” is no. There is currently no button, link, or feature on Facebook itself that will display your profile viewers.
The bottom line: none of these tricks or tools can show you who’s viewing your profile. If they could, everybody would be using them! Facebook is pretty firm on this, and any claim to the contrary is either misinformation or a scam.
Scammers know people are curious about this topic, and they exploit it so if you ever encounter something outside of Facebook that promises to show you who viewed your profile, be very cautious. Do not give out your Facebook login details or permissions to unknown apps claiming to unlock this feature. Often, these are phishing scams or malware in disguise.
- Recommended by Our Editors: You Won’t Believe How Much Does Facebook Pay for Views—Here’s the Breakdown
How to Control Who Can View Your Profile?
You might not be able to see who is viewing you, but you can control who gets to view your profile in the first place.
Facebook’s privacy settings allow you to limit your audience and you can make your future posts visible only to your Friends (instead of Public), restrict who can look you up using your email or phone number, or even block specific people entirely.
While this won’t tell you anything about unseen visitors, it at least lets you manage and reduce who can potentially view your content. In fact, you can even put someone on your Restricted list; they’ll stay on your friends list but only see the posts you make public, nothing you share just to friends.
Focus on What You Can Control
When considering the question, “can you see who views your Facebook profile?” the answer is no. Since Facebook does not allow this feature, it’s more productive to focus on what you can control, such as creating engaging content and building connections. Using features like Stories or Live videos can also give you some insight, since you’ll see the names of viewers there.
If you’re trying to grow your presence on Facebook for a business or personal brand, focus on increasing your reach in legitimate ways like using Facebook’s built-in Insights to learn when your audience is online and what kind of posts get the best response. Some content creators even choose to buy Facebook views from services like QQTube to boost their view counts and help rank higher in the Facebook algorithm.
If you prefer a more official route, Facebook also lets you pay to reach more people using the Boost Post option or other ad tools. Promoting a post can help it get seen by a wider audience that might truly be interested in your content, but it won’t guarantee engagement.
Just remember: numbers aren’t everything and genuine interaction from real viewers and people who actually care about your content, is always better in the long run. Either way, putting effort into engaging posts and fostering real interaction will serve you much better than obsessing over an invisible list of profile lurkers.
