How to Block People From Seeing Who You Are Following on Tumblr

Many Tumblr themes automatically display a list of people you're following on the front page of your blog. This can be useful to automatically create a list of other blogs your readers can check out, but it can also be an irritation. If you feel that who you're following is nobody's business but your own, there are ways to remove the information, although how easy it is depends on the theme you're using for your blog.

Limitations

Whether you show your readers which blogs you follow is an all-or-nothing thing. You either display the list, or you don't; there is no way to only block some of your readers from seeing the list while leaving the information available for everybody else. Similarly, you can't hide some blogs in the list while still following them. If the list is visible, the blogs will appear in it, and the only way to prevent that from happening is to stop following them. As an alternative, you can manually add a curated list of interesting blogs to your own blog's sidebar or to a separate page.

Theme Settings

If you're lucky, the blog theme you're using has a setting to hide the list of people you're following. From your dashboard, click "Customize" to open the theme settings and customization screen. Look through the list of theme settings on the left side of the window for a switch labeled "Display Following" or similar. Toggle the switch off, click "Save" to apply the modified setting and then click "Exit" to return to your dashboard.

Removing the List Manually

If there is no option to disable the list in the theme's settings, you need to remove it manually. Click "Edit HTML" to show the theme's raw HTML code. Click the cog icon, select "Find and Replace" and type "{block:Following}" without quotes in the text field to jump to the line containing that particular code. Select that line and all lines after it, up to and including a line that ends with "{/block:Following}." Delete the selected lines, click "Update Preview" and then click "Save" to save your changes. Click the arrow and then click "Exit" to return to the dashboard.

Changing Themes

The removal of the list of blogs you're following from your blog's main page is linked to the theme you are currently using. Each Tumblr theme is unique and has different options, and any settings or code changes you make don't persist through theme changes. If you ever switch your blog to a different theme, you'll need to remove the list again.