Privacy is a major concern when using Facebook Messenger. Accidental exposure of private conversations can be uncomfortable or risky, so hiding and unhiding (archiving and unarchiving) chat history is a simple way to keep your inbox organized and maintain your privacy.
Messenger is widely used across desktop and mobile platforms, making it even more important to manage your chat history carefully.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to hide and unhide chat messages with specific people, helping you keep your conversations private while using Facebook.
Why Hide Chat History on Facebook?
Hiding chats allows you to remove conversations from your inbox view without deleting them, which helps keep your Messenger organized. If you are extremely concerned about privacy, you can also permanently delete conversations.
Facebook Messenger Overview and Privacy Tips
Facebook Messenger is widely popular worldwide and is available on all major desktop platforms (Windows and Mac) and mobile platforms (iOS and Android).
Since its launch in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard classmates — Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes — Messenger has gone through many updates and interface changes.
You can further strengthen your privacy by enabling Face ID or fingerprint lock on Messenger (available for iPhone and many Android users).
How to Hide Facebook Chat Messages with Any Specific Person
Facebook keeps updating its features, so the exact steps may change. I’ll keep this post updated as things evolve.
Steps:
1. On your desktop browser, sign in to your Facebook account.
2. Click the Messages icon on the top navigation bar (next to your profile picture).
3. In the chat window (sidebar panel), click See all in Messenger to open the full Messenger view.
4. Hover your mouse over the conversation you want to archive (hide).
5. Click the three horizontal dots (options menu) next to that person’s name.
6. Select Archive chat.
What happens when you archive a chat?
- The chat with that person will be hidden from your Messenger inbox.
- It will also disappear from the Messenger mobile app until you unarchive it.
How to Unhide Facebook Chat Messages with Any Specific Person
Steps:
1. Follow the same steps above until you reach See all in Messenger.
2. In the left sidebar, click the three horizontal dots at the top and select Archived chats.
3. Hover over the conversation you want to unhide.
4. Click Unarchive.
The conversation will instantly return to your Messenger inbox.
Final Thoughts on Hiding and Unhiding Facebook Chat
Follow the above steps to hide and unhide chat history with specific people on Facebook.
For total privacy, don’t forget that you can also delete your entire Facebook chat history.
To know more about managing your privacy, check out this official Facebook guide.
As of Jan 2020, “Archive” is now replaced with “Hide”. I don’t want to hide…I just want to archive. I’m afraid if I push “hide”, I won’t be able to see that person’s messages. Where did archive go?
Hi, Stewey,
Facebook makes changes often and thanks for letting me know about this new change.
I tested/tried the so-called ‘Hide’ feature and have found that it hides the messages similar to archive. You can view/see/read the messages which are hidden as below though I could not find a way to unhide (unarchive) them.
1. Click the chat (messenger) icon.
2. Click on “see all in messenger’ link.
3. On the top click on the settings (bearing) icon and select ‘Hidden chats’.
It will show the hidden chats.