How to Filter Offensive Words and Custom Keywords on Instagram: Hidden Words Guide

Maintaining a professional and respectful environment in your comment sections and direct messages is essential for every brand and content creator. Unfiltered spam and offensive language can quickly damage your account’s reputation.

Instagram offers a built-in privacy feature called Hidden Words that automatically detects and hides comments and DM requests containing inappropriate terms or designated keywords.

In this complete guide, we provide the exact step-by-step navigation paths to set up automated filtering and build your custom keyword blocklist without needing manual moderation.

1. Enabling Automatic Offensive Comment Filtering (Hide Comments)

Instagram maintains a system-default list of offensive terms and spam phrases. Enabling this feature allows Instagram’s AI to automatically conceal matching comments from public view.

Exact Navigation Path in App:
Go to your Profile > Tap the 3-line menu in the top right > Select **Settings and activity** > Scroll down to How others can interact with you > Tap Hidden Words > Toggle on Hide comments and Advanced comment filtering.

2. Creating a Custom Keyword and Phrase Blocklist (Custom Words)

You can block specific keywords such as competitor mentions, repeated promo text, phone numbers, or custom inappropriate slang by building your personalized blocklist.

Exact Navigation Path to Add Custom Keywords:
Go to Profile > Tap 3-line menu > Settings and activity > Tap Hidden Words > Scroll down to Custom words and phrases > Tap Manage custom words and phrases > Type your keywords (separated by commas) > Tap Add > Go back and toggle on both **Hide comments** and **Hide message requests** under this section.

3. Filtering Direct Message (DM) Requests Containing Spam or Abuse

Inappropriate direct messages from non-followers can also be filtered out automatically. Enabling message request filtering moves flagged conversations straight into a hidden folder.

Exact Navigation Path for DM Filtering:
Go to Profile > Tap 3-line menu > Settings and activity > Select Hidden Words > Under the main section, toggle on Hide message requests.

4. Viewing and Restoring Filtered Comments

Comments hidden by Instagram are invisible to your general audience, but account owners retain the ability to inspect them and restore any valid comments hidden by mistake.

Exact Navigation Path to Inspect Hidden Comments:
Open the comment section of the specific post > Scroll to the very bottom > Tap View hidden comments > Long-press the target comment > Select Unhide.