Private Facebook Friends

How to Make Timeline Friends Private

Updated April 2013

If you don't want other people to see your friends list in your Timeline Profile, follow these steps:

First, view your own profile, and find the module that has your friends in it, hover your mouse over it, and then a little pencil will appear in the upper right corner. Click that, and then select "Edit Privacy"

Then in the top right, look for the Audience Selector and click it.
Then select "only me"
You can also select "custom" if you want to hide your friends from only certain people.

facebook timeline private friends

If you then want to verify that your friends are private, go back to your timeline and select the "View As" option here.
facebook timeline view as

If you want to see how it looks to a specific person, then you can click the "View as Specific Person" link as shown here:
facebook timeline public view

Keep in mind that this will not hide "mutual friends" - that is a separate function created on-the-fly by facebook, which means mutual friends can not be hidden.