Every account on fewer.photos is public by default. Your frames appear in Discover, they can be selected for Featured, and anyone can follow you the moment they decide to. If that’s what you want, there is nothing to change and nothing below applies to you.
Making your account private changes three things at once, which is why it’s a single switch rather than a set of them.
What Private Means
Go to Settings → Privacy and choose Private. From that point:
Your frames are visible only to people you’ve approved. Someone who isn’t approved doesn’t see a locked placeholder or a “this is private” message — the frame simply isn’t there for them, on Discover, in search, or at its own link.
Your frames stop appearing in Discover and stop being eligible for Featured. Both of those surfaces are open to the whole internet, including people who aren’t signed in, so a private frame can’t be part of them. A private account can’t be Featured; that’s worth knowing before you switch.
New follows become requests. Instead of following you outright, someone asks, and the request waits in Follow requests until you approve or deny it. Until you approve, they see nothing of yours.
Going Private Doesn’t Remove Anyone
People who already follow you keep their access. Going private changes who can get in from here, not who is already in.
If you want to remove someone who already follows you, that’s a separate action, and switching your account back and forth won’t do it.
Follow Requests
While you’re private, requests collect under Follow requests, reachable from Settings. Approving someone gives them access to your frames from that moment on. Denying removes the request entirely — nothing is recorded, and they’re free to ask again later. They aren’t told either way.
Switching back to Public approves everyone still waiting, since anyone can see your frames on a public account anyway.
Choosing While You Post
The upload screen asks, right beside the Post button: Everyone or Followers only. It arrives already set to whatever your account setting is, so you can leave it alone and post as you always have.
Leaving it alone means the frame follows your account rather than being pinned. Change your account to private later and that frame goes private with it. Picking the other option is what pins it, and a line under the control says which of the two you’ve done.
Once the frame is up, the page tells you which way it went and links to where you can change it.
Individual Frames
The account setting is a default, not a rule. Any single frame can override it from its own page: open the ⋯ menu beside the like and share buttons — it only appears on your own frames — and you’ll find the choice there, along with Delete. This is the full three-way version of what the upload screen offers.
Match account is the default. The frame follows whatever your account setting is, and changes with it.
Always public keeps the frame visible to everyone even while your account is private. Useful for the one photo you want to put in front of people, from an account that’s otherwise closed.
Always private hides a single frame while the rest of your public account carries on as normal.
A frame set to Always public stays public when you make your account private, so going private isn’t automatically a clean sweep. Settings tells you how many frames are pinned public when you make the switch.
Sharing a Private Frame
The share button works the same on every frame, but a link to a private frame only opens for people you’ve approved. Anyone else follows the link and finds nothing there. Sharing a private frame widely produces a link that most people can’t use.
Contact Sheets Follow the Same Rule
Your contact sheet — the downloadable image of your recent frames — only ever contains public ones, including when you’re the one downloading it. A private account has an empty sheet, and the download isn’t offered at all. An account that’s private with a few frames set Always public produces a sheet of exactly those frames.
Agents See What You See
A connected AI agent is bound to your account, so it runs into every rule above exactly as you do. With change access it can also work your side of them: approve or deny follow requests, set a single frame public or private, and flip the account switch. Grant that access only to an agent you’d trust with the switch itself.
Search Engines
A public profile and its frames can turn up in search results. A private account’s profile page is kept out of them — the page still opens for anyone who has the link, but search engines are told not to list it.
Frames you’ve set Always public stay findable at their own links, which is what pinning them is for.
What Private Doesn’t Cover
Your handle, profile photo, and bio stay visible. Privacy here is about frames.
Notification emails you’ve already been sent are already sent. If someone liked a frame and you later make it private, the email in their inbox still describes it. Going private changes what the app shows from now on, not what has already left it.