How to Delete a Public Profile on Snapchat
The control is called Clear Public Profile now, it is permanent, and it leaves one kind of content behind.
How to delete a public profile on Snapchat: open your Public Profile, tap the three-dot menu at the top right, scroll to the bottom of Public Profile Settings, tap Clear Public Profile and confirm. That permanently removes your bio, profile photo and public Stories. Spotlight and Snap Map Snaps stay, so delete those separately.
Your account itself is untouched. Your username, friends, streaks, chats and Memories carry on exactly as before, because the public profile is a layer on top of the private account rather than a separate account.
The clear cannot be undone. Snapchat's help center says the removed content cannot be reinstated, though you can start over by adding new content to a public profile later.
The order matters more than the steps do, and getting it wrong is the one mistake that is awkward to recover from.
Clearing the profile does not reach everything you published through it. As of October 2026, Snapchat's help center says Spotlight Snaps and Snap Map Snaps are not deleted when you clear a public profile. If your reason for removing the profile is that you do not want specific videos associated with you, clearing it alone leaves the most widely seen ones in place.
So delete the Spotlight posts first, confirm they are gone, then clear the profile. That sequence leaves nothing public behind.
It also explains why older guides describe this differently. For a long time the advice was that a public profile could only be switched off or hidden, with everything returning when it was switched back on. The current control is a clear, and it is permanent for the content it covers. If you only want a break from posting, simply stop posting; there is no need to wipe a profile you might want again, with its subscriber count, which Snapchat followers add to on profiles that are kept.
The other half worth knowing: Spotlight posts that were widely viewed may have been saved, screen-recorded or reposted elsewhere by other people. Deleting your copy removes it from Snapchat and does nothing about those. This is the same limitation every platform has, and it is worth being realistic about before assuming deletion solves a problem.
If the goal is to disappear entirely rather than to close the public side, that is account deletion, which is a different and much heavier action.
Clearing the profile, step by step
Open Snapchat and tap your Bitmoji or profile icon in the top left to open your profile, then open your Public Profile.
Tap the three-dot menu in the top right. That opens Public Profile Settings.
Scroll to the bottom and tap Clear Public Profile. Some older app versions and third-party guides call it Delete Public Profile; it is the same control at the bottom of the same screen.
Confirm. The bio, profile photo, public Stories and Stories saved to the public profile are removed permanently.
Removing the content first
Spotlight posts are deleted individually from the Spotlight tab of your profile: open a post, use its menu, delete.
Snaps you submitted to Snap Map are removed the same way, from the Snap Map section of your profile.
Lenses you published, if you made any, are managed in Lens Studio rather than in the app, and have to be unpublished there.
None of this happens when the profile is cleared, and there is no delete-everything control for Spotlight.
What happens to Snap Star and business features
If the account had Snap Star or business status, clearing the public profile ends the extras that came with it. Snapchat's help center says you will no longer have the added benefits, such as membership roles and category designations.
That is the real cost of the clear for a creator or a business, more than the content itself. Getting those features back is not a matter of switching a setting on again.
Friends are a separate relationship entirely. Nothing about the public profile affects your friends list, your Snap streaks or your private messaging.
The difference from deleting the account
Deleting a Snapchat account is done from accounts.snapchat.com in a browser, not in the app.
It begins a thirty-day deactivation during which logging in cancels the deletion: the same pattern most platforms use, and the same trap. Anything that signs you in during that window reverses it.
After thirty days the account is removed permanently.
That is the route if the goal is to leave entirely. Clearing a public profile is the route if you want to keep using Snapchat privately, which is what most people searching for this actually want.
Why the public profile exists at all
Snapchat was built around private messaging between friends, and the public profile was added to give creators a surface that behaves like other platforms: a subscriber count, published Stories, and Spotlight reach.
It is the only part of Snapchat with a public audience, and it is where the platform's discovery lives. Setting up a Snapchat public profile covers what it gives you, and who views your Snapchat public profile sets out the narrow analytics it reports back.
That makes it genuinely useful for anybody publishing and entirely unnecessary for anybody who is not, which is why so many people turn one on, find they have no reason to post publicly, and come looking for how to undo it.
For anyone deciding to keep it instead, the subscriber total on the profile is public, and Snapchat followers add to that number; they do not change who sees your Spotlight posts. What followers on Snapchat are explains how subscribers differ from friends, and the rest of the platform's guides sit on the Snapchat hub.
Questions people ask about removing a Snapchat public profile
Can I delete my Snapchat public profile?
Yes. In Public Profile Settings, tap Clear Public Profile at the bottom and confirm. It permanently removes the bio, photo and public Stories, while your account stays.
Does clearing the profile delete my Spotlight posts?
No. Snapchat says Spotlight Snaps and Snap Map Snaps are not deleted when you clear a public profile. Delete them individually first.
Can I undo clearing my public profile?
No. The removed content cannot be reinstated. You can start over by adding new content to a public profile later.
Does it affect my friends or streaks?
No. Friends, streaks, chats and Memories are part of the private account and are untouched by clearing the public profile.
How do I delete the whole account instead?
At accounts.snapchat.com in a browser. It starts a thirty-day deactivation, and signing in during that window cancels it.
Does deleting remove reposts of my Spotlight videos?
No. Content other people saved or reposted elsewhere is outside Snapchat's reach, as on every platform.
Keep reading
- subscribers on a Snapchat profile — For a public profile you keep, subscribers on a Snapchat profile add to the count a visitor sees.
- setting one up in the first place — If you are deciding whether to have one at all, setting one up in the first place covers what it gives you.
- what the profile reports back — The analytics are narrower than creators expect, and what the profile reports back sets out what you can actually see.