In this article
The row of tabs under a profile — media, files, posts, stories, gifts — has a default, and the default can be changed. Hold the one you want and set it as the main tab, and that is where visitors land instead of where they used to.
One setting, taken in about four seconds, that decides what a stranger learns about you first.
What you will be able to do
- check_circle Set which tab a visitor sees first.
- check_circle Choose it for the visitor rather than for yourself.
- check_circle Recognise when the default was already right.
- check_circle Keep whatever you promoted worth landing on.
Hold the tab rather than tapping it — the option is in the menu that appears.
dashboard_customize Answer the visitor's question, not your own
People arrive at a profile with something specific in mind. Usually it is one of three things: is this the right person, what do they do, or can I trust them with whatever is about to happen. They spend a few seconds finding out and then they leave or they do not.
The instinct when choosing a tab is to promote whatever you are proudest of. That is the wrong test, and it is how profiles end up leading with something that answers a question nobody asked. The better test is to picture the last three people who opened your profile and ask what each of them came to find out.
Which is why the default is right for most accounts. If people open your profile to check they have the correct person before messaging, the ordinary view does that fine, and rearranging it is effort spent on an audience of nobody.
Four landings, and who each one is for
Each choice makes a different claim about what this account is.
perm_media The one most people should leave alone
amp_stories For anybody who makes things
redeem A specific statement, made deliberately
folder_open The narrow case
Picture the last three people who opened your profile. Set it for them.
visibility Look before you promote
Whichever tab you choose, open it once as a stranger would and read what is in it. Every one of these surfaces has accumulated for years without anybody curating it, and a tab that was fine as the fourth option is being examined differently as the first.
The media tab in particular holds things people forget: screenshots kept for a reason that has passed, a photograph of a document, pictures from a chat that ended badly. None of that is new, and all of it is about to be the first thing visitors see.
None of this replaces the privacy settings, which decide who can see any of it at all. This one only decides the order. If the honest answer to what a stranger should see first is nothing, that is a different screen, and it is the one worth opening instead.
settings Setting it
- Open your own profile view The tab row sits under the bio.
- Read the tab you are thinking of promoting As a stranger would.
- Hold the tab rather than tapping it The option is in the menu.
- Set it as the main tab Visitors now land there.
- Leave it alone if the default answers the question Most accounts should.
- Check it again in six months The right answer moves.
This page decides the order of what a visitor sees. The curriculum step decides who sees which version of you at all: separate photos for contacts and strangers, and what a profile gives away before anybody reads a word.
At a glance
- 1Default tab
Choose which profile tab visitors see first.
- 2For visitors
Pick what people come looking for.
- 3Keep it fresh
A stale front tab is worse than the default.
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