UPDATED OCTOBER 2026

Missing posts from the people you actually want to hear from? Facebook still gives you a few useful ways to take control. The trick is knowing the difference between Custom lists, Favourites and Feeds.

Do you wonder how your old colleagues are doing? What about friends from the town you grew up in, people from the Italian cooking course, or family scattered around the world? Their updates can easily disappear among everything else in your Facebook feed.

This guide originally explained Facebook friend lists. Facebook has changed since then. The old Explore → Friend Lists and See First instructions no longer match the current desktop screens. Here is what to use now.

Read recent posts

Open Feeds, then choose Friends, Favourites, Groups or Pages.

Prioritise your people

Add up to 30 friends and Pages to Favourites.

Share with a circle

Use Custom lists to organise friends and choose an audience for a post.

1Use Feeds to catch up

Your usual Home feed is personalised. It includes recommendations as well as updates from people and Pages you follow. Feeds gives you a more direct way to browse recent posts from your existing connections.

On a computer

Open Facebook and return to Home.
Choose Feeds in the left menu. Click See more if it is hidden.
Choose Friends to catch up with friends, or select Favourites, Groups or Pages. All combines the sources.

Facebook Feeds menu showing All, Favourites, Friends, Groups and Pages — The current desktop Feeds menu. Choose the kind of updates you want to catch up with.
Tap or click the image to enlarge.

On a phone: open Facebook’s Menu and look for Feeds, sometimes under See more. Then choose the relevant filter. Menu positions and available shortcuts can vary by app version.

Feeds is a useful place to visit when you want to catch up. It does not permanently replace Home, guarantee that you will see every post, or remove adverts.

2Put important people in Favourites

Want to hear more from your sister, your closest friends or a favourite local business? Favourites is the current tool for giving their posts extra priority.

You can add up to 30 friends and Pages in total. Their posts are prioritised in your main Feed, and you can also view them together through the Favourites filter.

The desktop route checked for this guide

Open Feeds → Favourites.
Click Manage Favorites. Yes, Facebook may use the American spelling on this button!
In Content preferences, choose Favourites.
Use the search box to find a friend or Page, then use the star control beside their name to add or remove them.

Return to Feeds → Favourites whenever you want to read updates from this selection.

Facebook Favourites settings explaining prioritised posts and the limit of 30 friends and Pages — Facebook’s current Favourites explanation. Friends and Pages share the same 30-place allowance.
Tap or click the image to enlarge.

A useful distinction: adding someone to Close friends is different from adding them to Favourites. For Feed priority, use Favourites. A custom list name such as “Family” is not an extra Favourites feed.

3Create and manage Custom lists

Custom lists are still handy for organising friends into circles such as family, old colleagues or your Bonsai club. A friend can belong to more than one list. These are lists of friends, rather than Facebook Groups.

Use the desktop website for the route below. On the account checked for this update, the Custom lists screen opened a membership manager, rather than the old list-specific news feed.

On a computer

From Home, open Friends.
Choose Custom lists.
To start a list, click Create List, enter a name, then confirm.
Open the list to manage its members. Look for Manage, choose the friends you want to include and save your changes.

To change an existing list, select its name first. Facebook also shows built-in options such as Close friends, Acquaintances and Restricted. These have different purposes, so choose carefully.

You do not need a custom list just to read more from a few favourite people. Start with Favourites for that.

4Share a post with a particular list

Perhaps you want to share family news with relatives, or a club update with the friends who belong to it. A custom list can save you selecting those people one by one.

Start a new post using What’s on your mind?
Open the audience selector beneath your name. It may currently say Friends or Public.
Look through the audience options and choose your list. Expand the options if necessary.
Check the audience shown before you post. Publish only when it matches the people you intend to share with.

This changes who can see your post. It does not change whose posts appear in your Feed. Check the audience again on your next post, too.

5Make your feed a little quieter

Take a break

Snooze hides updates from a person, Page or group for 30 days. Look in the three-dot menu on a post.

Stay friends

Unfollow stops someone’s posts appearing in your Feed while keeping the friendship.

You can review these choices in Content preferences, which includes Snooze, Unfollow and Reconnect. If adverts are the main frustration, see How to Change the Adverts You See on Facebook.

Try this first

Add five people you regularly miss to Favourites, then open Feeds → Favourites. A small change can make catching up much easier.

Sources and update notes

Updated 17 October 2026. Desktop routes and screenshots were checked in Facebook. Facebook changes menus and rolls features out gradually, so your wording or layout may differ. Phone guidance is general; the screenshots show the desktop website.

Older comments below may refer to earlier versions of Facebook.

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