If you’ve recently gotten in to using Pinterest regularly, and love using pins and boards to express yourself and find inspiration, you may be interested in changing or updating some of your account settings to make sure that what you’re putting out there is exactly what you want others to see! In this article, we’ll show you step-by-step how to access and update your account settings, and explain each category of settings in detail, so you know exactly where to go depending on which settings you want to change.
How to access settings on Pinterest
- Go to www.pinterest.com and log in to your account.
- Click on your profile icon in the top-right corner to go to your personal page.
- Click the gear icon below your name, to be taken to your settings page.
- From there, choose a category, and click on any toggle to enable/disable a feature.
Categories of settings on Pinterest
Pinterest organizes all of the settings that you can modify into five categories, listed along the left-hand side of the screen for convenience: Account Basics, Profile, Notifications, Social Networks, and Apps. Click one of them to quickly go to that section. We'll break down the settings in each category below.
Account Basics
This affects your general account and privacy settings on Pinterest. Here are the things you can change here:
- Email Address — Click in this box and type in the email address that you want to use to log in, as well as the one that you want to receive news and notifications from Pinterest. You will have to confirm this new email address in the same way that you did your original one, when you signed up.
- Password — Click Change Your Password to open a new window, and then click in the respective boxes and type in your old password, a new password, and a repeat of your new password (to confirm it). Then click Change Password.
- Language — Click this drop-down menu to select what language is displayed.
- Country — Click this drop down menu to select what country you're from. This may help you find people and content closer to home.
- Gender — Click one of the buttons here to choose between "Male," "Female," or "Unspecified." This may help Pinterest find content that is more suited to your tastes when it displays pins on your main page, or when you search.
- Search Privacy — Click to switch this setting to Yes if you don't want people to be able to find your profile by using common search engines, such as Google Search, Yahoo Search, or Bing. (It may take some time for any actual changes to happen).
- Personalization — These settings let Pinterest make recommendations for new content that you might like, based either on websites other than Pinterest that you visit, as well as when you look at content belonging to Pinterest's advertising partners.
If you don't want to be given recommendations in this way, click both buttons to set them to No.
- Search History — Click Clear Search History to tell remove things that you've searched for previously in the search suggestions.
- Account — Click Deactivate Account to close your account, either temporarily or permanently. If you need help with this, check out our tutorial on how to delete a Pinterest account for further instructions.
Profile
This lets you control how you appear to other users on Pinterest. You can change:
- Name — Click in either box, and type to change your first or last name.
- Picture — Click Change Picture, and then click Choose Picture to open up a file explorer window on your computer. Navigate to the picture that you want to use as your profile picture, click it to select it, and then click Open to set it as your profile picture.
- Username — Click in this box and type in a new username between 3 and 15 characters long, without any spaces or special characters. The only thing this will affect is the web address of your page.
- AboutYou — Click in this box and type in a little about yourself, so Pinterest users have more than a name and a face to go off of!
- Location — Click in this box and type in where you live, so that other people get an idea of where you are on the planet relative to them.
IMPORTANT NOTE: For privacy reasons, it's probably best if you limit this to a state/province and country, or a city at the most specific. That is, don't write your full address in here; letting strangers know exactly where you live can be dangerous. If you want, you can just leave this blank.
- Website — If you have a personal website, you can type its web address into this box. Click Verify Website to confirm that the web address you provide doesn't lead to a website that scams people or infects their computers with viruses.
Notifications
These settings deal with letting you know when something happens involving you on Pinterest. Here are the things you can set:
- When You're On Pinterest — Click the appropriate button to choose whether you can receive notifications from anyone, or just people whom you follow.
- Email — Click the button here to choose whether or not you receive notifications about things that happen on Pinterest concerning you by way of email. If you have this button set to No, you may still receive emails about any important privacy or policy changes.
If you have this button set to Yes, the buttons below will allow you to choose what kinds of notifications you receive via email, and (for some of them) how often you get them. Click the buttons to toggle and choose the appropriate options.
- On Your Phone — Click Edit Push Notification Settings, and then click on the check boxes beside each type of notification to choose whether or not you will receive a notification about it if you have the Pinterest app for your mobile phone.
Social Media
This lets you connect your Pinterest account to other social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.
Based on which social accounts you connect to, you may be able to find more people whom you know on Pinterest, or have your activity automatically posted to those accounts.
Click the button beside a social media website in the list to toggle it to Yes, then log into your account on that website (using the window that pops up) to link it to your Pinterest account.
Apps
This generally deals with what the Pinterest application for mobile devices are allowed to do, with respect to your account. If you don't have the app installed on any of your mobile devices (like a tablet computer or smart phone), there isn't really anything to worry about here.
When you're done making any changes to your settings, be sure to click Save Settings at the bottom of the screen.
To keep search engines from showing your Pinterest profile:
- Visit www.pinterest.com and sign in to your account.
- Click the profile icon in the top-right corner to go to your personal profile.
- Click the gear icon, and then click Account Settings.
- Switch the Search Privacy toggle from No to Yes.
- Click Save Settings to enable this feature.
And that's a quick primer on updating your Pinterest settings! It’s always good practice when you sign up for a service to review the default settings. You may be surprised what information a service deems appropriate to share by default. You should also make yourself aware of which aspects of the service you can customize to you; it can really enrich your experience on a website like Pinterest.
