How to Hide Profile Picture on WhatsApp and Telegram

Are you a social media user who is pretty conscious about your privacy.? You may be one of those people who want to hide their profile picture on WhatsApp and Telegram. In this guide, I will teach you how to do it. People can literally search anyone up on Telegram or WhatsApp if they have that person’s number. Not everyone may be comfortable with any random person finding them out and seeing their display picture.

You can either set your WhatsApp profile picture visibility accessible to folks on your contact list. If you are too privacy conscious, you can make the display image invisible to everyone. One better option is to not at all upload your profile picture. Not everyone may like this though. On Telegram, there are options to limit your picture’s visibility to your contacts only. You can also add exceptions that particular contact won’t be able to see it while others can. Let’s get into the guide and check out the steps for doing all these.

Reason Why You Need to Hide Profile Picture on WhatsApp and Telegram

Privacy concerns: By hiding their profile picture, users can prevent strangers or people they don’t know well from accessing their personal information.
Security concerns: Displaying a profile picture can make it easier for scammers or hackers to create fake accounts or impersonate the user, potentially putting their personal data at risk.
Stalking or harassment: In some cases, individuals may feel uncomfortable or unsafe sharing their profile picture due to concerns about being stalked or harassed by someone who has access to their information.
Cultural or religious reasons: In certain cultures or religions, it may be considered inappropriate or taboo to display one’s image publicly, making it necessary to hide their profile picture on messaging apps.
Professional reasons: Individuals who use messaging apps for work or business purposes may want to hide their personal profile picture to maintain a more professional appearance or to separate their personal and professional lives.

Hide Profile Picture on WhatsApp

First, let’s hide the profile picture on WhatsApp.

Open WhatsApp
Tap on the 3-dot button on the top-right corner of the screen
Then from the menu select Settings
Now, tap on Accounts
Select Privacy and the first tab you will see is Who can see my personal info
Under that tap on the option profile photo [by default the visibility would be set to My contacts]
You will have three options: Everyone, My Contacts, and Nobody.
If you don’t want anybody to see your profile picture, then select the option Nobody

Otherwise, as I mentioned, by default only the people on your WhatsApp contact list will be able to see your WhatsApp display image.

How to Hide Profile Picture on Telegram

Now, let’s move to Telegram.

Open Telegram app
Tap on the Settings icon on the bottom right corner
Scroll down and select Privacy and Security
Go to Profile Photo [the visibility will be set to Everyone by default]
Tap on it and under Who Can See My Profile Photo select My contacts

Adding Exception to My Contacts List

Let’s say there may be a few people in the contacts list of Telegram with whom you may not get along really well or you may not know them personally. So, you would want to hide your display pictures from them. Now, you have set your Profile picture visibility to your contacts which will include the people you want to avoid. So, here you can add an exception and make your photo invisible from those particular users.

Under the Exceptions tab, select the option Never Share With
Now, select the contact(s)
Once done, tap on Done

Now, your telegram profile picture will be visible to every person on your contact list except those users that you have kept in the exception list.