How to remove Threads from Instagram

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This question means four different things depending on who is asking, and the settings involved are in four different places. Work out which one you want before changing anything — the drastic option is rarely the one people actually need.

Hiding the Threads badge on your profile

This is what most people mean. The badge is a small Threads marker beside your Instagram bio, showing your Threads post count and linking visitors across. It was added to drive sign-ups, and you are not obliged to keep advertising it.

1. Open Instagram and go to your own profile.
2. Tap Edit profile.
3. Scroll down to Show Threads badge and turn the toggle off.

The change is immediate and visible to everyone who opens your profile. It has no effect on your Threads profile, which continues to exist and remains reachable by anyone who searches for you there.

One honest caveat: this toggle has never been universally available. It has come and gone across app versions and regions, and some accounts have never seen it. If it is not in your Edit profile screen, updating the app is the only thing worth trying — there is no hidden route to it, and no third-party tool can add one.

Removing the Threads shortcut from Instagram's menu

Separate from the badge. Instagram also keeps its own link to Threads inside the app's navigation, which is about Instagram prompting you rather than about what visitors see.

1. In Instagram, open the menu from your profile and go to settings.
2. Find the Threads entry in the list.
3. Turn the shortcut off.

Like the badge, this is cosmetic. It tidies your own interface and changes nothing about either account.

Stopping Threads posts from appearing on Instagram

Worth clearing up, because it causes unnecessary alarm: Threads does not quietly republish your posts to Instagram. Cross-posting is opt-in, and if your Threads posts are turning up on Instagram, it is because the option was enabled — often accidentally, since the control sits in the composer next to the post button.

1. Open the Threads composer as though you were about to post.
2. Check the sharing options for Instagram and Facebook and make sure both are off.
3. The setting is remembered for future posts, so this is a one-time fix rather than something to check every time.

Turning it off applies from that point forward. Anything already shared to Instagram is now an ordinary Instagram post and has to be deleted there.

Uninstalling the app is not removal

Deleting the Threads app from your phone frees up storage and stops the notifications. It does not remove your profile. Your posts stay publicly readable, people can still follow and reply, and the badge — if you left it on — keeps pointing at a profile you are no longer reading.

If your goal is to not exist on Threads, uninstalling gets you none of the way there.

Actually removing the Threads profile

If you want the profile gone rather than hidden, that is deactivation or deletion, and it is now genuinely independent of Instagram — early on, leaving Threads meant losing your Instagram account, which is no longer the case.

The full walkthrough, including the difference between deactivating and deleting and what to export first, is in how to delete a Threads account.

What you cannot do

• You cannot unlink the accounts and keep both. There is no setting that converts a Threads profile into a standalone account with its own login. The Instagram identity is the foundation, not a connection that can be detached.
• You cannot use a different handle on each. Change one and the other changes with it.
• You cannot stop people finding you by name while your profile is public and active. Making it private is the setting that does that.