Quick Video (Silent)
Detailed Instructions
To make a subreddit private, you obviously must be the admin of that subreddit.
We have a subreddit called ‘example subreddit’, one that we will be using in order to illustrate how you make a subreddit private.
The first step is to visit the main page of your subreddit. From there, click on the MOD TOOLS button.
On the left-hand side of the screen, scroll down until you get to the ‘Community settings’ section.
Click on the ‘Community settings section’ then go to the right side of the screen and scroll down until you see the ‘Type of Community’ options. You should see it currently set to ‘Public’. If you click on ‘Private’ and then ‘Save changes’, that will make your subreddit private.
Now keep in mind, there is also another option that says ‘Accepting requests to join’. If you have that option enabled, it will display a button on your private subreddit that allows users to request to join.
Regardless of whether you had this enabled or not, users may still send Mod mail to you as the admin of that subreddit. And that is all you have to do. Once you click save changes, your subreddit will now be private.
If you are the moderator for a subreddit, you may be interested in getting notifications of when new posts occur in that subreddit, or of when keywords occur in that subreddit that you are modding. You can always use Notifier for this so reach out if you have any questions.