Spoilers, begone. Threads has finally expanded its Hidden Words feature to let you mute certain keywords from your feed, search and profiles. Previously, you could hide only certain terms from replies.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced the update Thursday. He noted that this feature is meant to help give users more control over their Threads experience and to keep the platform “a place for positive conversation.”
Threads has been growing steadily since its launch last July. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call that Threads has surpassed 150 million monthly active users. That’s a 20 million jump from the last estimate Meta gave in February, which counts users who open the Threads app at least once a month.
New data from Apptopia estimates that Threads has now surpassed X (formerly Twitter) in daily active users. A Meta spokesperson said Threads only releases numbers on monthly active users but reiterated Zuckerberg’s statement Wednesday that the platform “continues to be on the trajectory that we hoped to see.”
Mosseri also said Threads will be beta testing an archive feature that would allow you to remove posts from your profile, likely similar to Instagram’s post archive function. Right now, this is available for only a small number of users, but the feature will hopefully be more widely available soon after improvements have been made based on community feedback, according to a Meta spokesperson.
For now, you can take advantage of the newly expanded Hidden Words feature. It’s a bit buried under submenus and not with your other account settings, but I’ll walk you through how to find it and start muting terms.
How to mute or hide certain terms on Threads
Whether you’re trying to avoid spoilers, certain topics or trolls, you can customize your feed using the Hidden Words feature. Here’s how.
1. Open the Threads mobile app.
2. Go to your profile.
3. Tap the globe icon in the upper left corner.
4. Tap Hidden Words.
5. Tap On under Custom words and phrases.
6. Tap Manage custom words and phrases.
7. Enter the terms you want to hide.
8. Tap Add.
You can enter multiple-word terms by separating them with commas or altogether if it’s a hashtag. If you use a comma, it will generate a blocked term with spaces in between the words and block each individual word. If you don’t want to block the individual words, simply tap the “X” next to the term. For example, I’m trying to avoid spoilers for Emily Henry’s new book Funny Story, but I don’t want to mute every Thread with the words “funny” and “story.”
For more, check out how to use Meta AI and features to give your Instagram Reels and Stories a boost.
