How Private Pinterest Boards Work
You can only create up to 3 secret boards
If you already have 3 secret boards but want to make a new one, you’ll need to delete one or make one of your current secret boards visible to everyone. If you’re invited to contribute to someone else’s secret board, it won’t count against your 3-board limit.
Your Secret Board pins will not show up anywhere on Pinterest
When you add a pin to a secret board, it won’t show up in the category sections, Popular, Everything, anyone’s search results, your followers’ home feed, your own home feed, or even pins or activity pages on your profile.
Your secret boards and pins can be found at the bottom of your profile.
How to Create Your Private Pinterest Board
Making Your Private Pinterest Board Publicly Visible
The most important thing you need to know: Once you’ve made a secret board visible to everyone, you can’t change a board back to secret (you also can’t make existing boards secret).
What happens when you make a Secret Board visible to everyone?
- People who have selected “Follow All” on your account will now be added as followers to your newly visible board.
- People will now be able to see your board on your profile and follow it like they can do any other board.
- All of the pins on the board will become visible to everyone and can be liked, repinned, and commented on by all other users. All of the comments on the board will also become visible to everyone.
Collaborating on Private Boards on Pinterest
Adding Contributors
Once you’ve created the secret board, simply type in the first and last name of the person you would like to add as a contributor (or type in their email address). You can invite people you follow on Pinterest as well as your Facebook friends. You can add more people to your secret board anytime you want.
All collaborators are also able to recommend other people to be invited to a secret board. The creator of the board is the only person who can approve and remove these requested collaborators.
When a secret board has multiple contributors:
- ONLY the board’s creator can make the secret board visible to everyone. No other person will be able to change this setting.
- Invited contributors will be able to view the secret board and request approval for people they would like to invite to the secret board. Only the board’s creator can approve and remove these requested contributors.
- All contributors will be able to repin and like pins on this board. All contributors will also be able to repin contents of the secret board to other boards. These repins and likes will not display information about the secret board or link back to the secret board.
Invited to someone else’s secret board? Your activity might not stay secret.
If you accept an invitation to join a secret group board, the creator of the secret board can make the board visible to everyone at any time, and does not need permission from other collaborators to do so.
If the board’s creator changes the secret setting of the board to visible, all the collaborators will receive an email notification.
What happens when a secret group board is made visible to everyone?
- All the board collaborators become visible to everyone
- Everyone’s pins and comments on the board also become visible.
- The board and its pins now become visible to everyone on each of the board collaborators’ profiles.
- People who selected “Follow All” on any of the collaborators’ profiles will be added as followers to the newly visible board.
- Previously existing pins will become visible in Search results, and will be interactive just like regular pins.
- New pins on the group board will be shown to the board’s followers and can be shown in other public areas of Pinterest, such as Search results, the Everything page, the general category feeds, etc.
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I had two secret boards and collaborated on one secret board. I could not create another board (was told I had reached my limit) so I made one of my secret boards public, only now I still can’t create another secret board. What gives?
I have three personal secret boards and one friend shared one with me successfully making 4. Another friend tried to share one with me recently and they are not allowed to. Is there a limit on sharing as well?
I’m in a private group board and we have been messaging back and forth. A random pin showed up in our message thread from a user who is not in our private Pinterest group. Now I’m concerned how it got there. My questions now are: If you message the users who are sharing a private board can others see it? Also, how could that wayward pin have ended up there?