Reddit is one of the best places on the internet for discussing anything that interests you. From home improvements to existential ponderings to movie reviews, there's a subreddit to suit, whether you need advice and opinions or want to give them out.

If you want to actually interact with Reddit posts and create your own, you need a Reddit account, and that comes with a Reddit profile. Anyone else on the platform can look this up to check how long you've been on Reddit, the boards you've active on, and the posts and comments you've contributed.

You don't necessarily want all of this information on display to everyone all of the time, and Reddit has now rolled out more customization controls for limiting what shows up on your profile when someone else visits. You can now hide a lot of the post and comment activity, for example, if you don't want it to be directly viewable from your profile.

It's worth taking a few minutes to change your profile settings to suit your needs: You never know who might be taking a peek at your Reddit profile, and with these new controls, you can keep your privacy protected.

Find the Settings

There are new settings for your Reddit profile.David Nield

If you've got any Reddit page open in a desktop web browser, you can click your profile avatar (top right), then View Profile to see what you're sharing with the wider world: You'll see headers including Posts, Comments, Upvoted, and Downvoted, which will show your Reddit activity in reverse chronological order.

To start making changes to what's visible, click one of the Update buttons on the right. The Profile and Avatar options lead to options such as your display name and picture on Reddit, the social links you have displayed on your profile, and how you want Reddit to notify you about activity on the platform.

Switch to the Privacy tab on the settings screen and you get some control over how visible your profile is. You have options to hide your profile from searches, to choose whether or not people can follow your activity on Reddit, and to control who can send you chat requests. You can, if you want, turn off chat requests altogether.

To get to the new settings Reddit has just added, click Update next to Curate your profile on your actual profile page, or if you're already on the main settings screen then open the Profile tab and scroll down to Curate your profile. Note that these options only affect what's visible on your profile—they don't affect posts and comments themselves.

You can get to these same settings through the official Reddit app for Android or iOS too. Tap your profile avatar in the top right corner of any screen, then choose Curate your profile to get to the new options, or Settings to configure every aspect of your Reddit experience (including your display name and profile picture).

Curate Your Profile

You can hide activity from some subreddits and not others.David Nield

There are two toggle switches in the curation settings: NSFW, if enabled, will hide all NSFW content from your profile, so that's anything that you've posted or any comments you've left on subreddits marked as adult (not suitable for work). It doesn't cover NSFW subreddits you've viewed; this information isn't shown on your profile.

The second toggle switch is for Followers—basically whether you want visitors to your profile to see how many people are following you, and to be able to see the names and profiles of those users. It's not the most sensitive type of information, but you might not want to broadcast how popular (or unpopular) you are.

Next to Content and activity, click the Show all drop-down menu to pick from three options: Show all (the current default where all activity shows up on your profile), Hide all (no post or comment activity shows up on your profile), and Customize (which gives you more control over what's shown and what isn't).

The Show all and Hide all options require no further configuration, but if you pick Customize you'll get a new pop-up dialog listing all the subreddits you've been active in. Using the checkboxes to the right, you can show or hide activity from these subreddits on your profile. It's all or nothing for each community—you can't control this down to individual posts or comments.

Again, you'll only see subreddits where you've posted or left comments. Posts and boards you've only viewed aren't shown on your profile. You can come back and alter these settings whenever you like, based on whether you want other people to see your activity. Maybe you're proud of your contributions to r/MusicRecommendations but would rather people didn't know you're regularly posting on r/HealthAnxiety, for example.