Remember when you opened Facebook and saw a constant flow of posts by your nearest and dearest? Yeah, those were the days! Facebook has changed significantly since its launch. If you want to see even a small percentage of friends’ posts now, you will have to learn how to control your Facebook news feed!
Facebook decides whose posts you can see when, but there is a feature to view Facebook posts chronologically, which you can activate temporarily. It is called Facebook ‘most recent’.
Check your Facebook Feed Timeline
Try this exercise: Open Facebook mobile app and have a look at the first four posts; note who posted each one, and how long ago they posted it. Mine reads like this:
- First post is from a friend who I have added as a Favourite. She posted it 5 hours ago.
- Second is a sponsored (paid advert)
- Third is a friend who posted at 1.22 pm, 4 days ago
- Fourth is a post, by a friend, in a group which I do not belong to, at 8.44 am, 2 days ago.
Out of interest, I went to check the posts of my family and friends – both those in my favourites and not. There was plenty of very recent activity. A dozen of them had posted within the past 5 minutes!
For a social media app which, supposedly, helps me keep in touch with friends and family, how does this make any sense?
View Facebook Posts Chronologically
This is a temporary view which you can switch on but it only stays active for a short time.
Facebook Most Recent – Desktop
If you have a desktop PC, activate the Most Recent option, which will immediately change your Facebook news feed to show posts in chronological order, rather than those which Facebook thinks you should see.
On Facebook desktop (not the mobile app) in the left-hand menu, you will see ‘Most Recent’.
Click that button and the whole scenario changes. You will see a heading ‘Most Recent’ at the top of your feeds and all the posts will be a few minutes old.
Facebook Most Recent – Mobile
On mobile, click the three-horizontal-lines, hamburger menu. Scroll down until you see ‘Recent and favourites’. Clicking that button will temporarily place three tabs at the top of your screen: Home – Favourites – Recent.
You can toggle between regular view, a feed showing people you have added to your favourites and the most recent posts. It won’t stay active for long, suddenly the tabs will vanish and you will be back to Facebook’s chosen feed.
Take control of your Facebook News feed
There is no wonder-fix that will eliminate the advertisers that now dominate Facebook. The Zuk is earning far too much money out of them to enable you to do that! If you feel very strongly about seeing as many of your close friend’s posts as possible, the first tip is the no 1 solution.
- Get rid of all your acquaintances and people who you have collected as ‘friends’, but aren’t! Limit your friends to actual friends and clear out the clutter! If you have a business page, however, you don’t want to be doing this.
- Read my blog on creating and using Facebook Lists to further control your Facebook news feed.
- Adjust your news feed settings. Click the little down arrow on the top right of Facebook and click Settings & Privacy, then News Feed Preferences.
Facebook News Feed Preferences
In your news feed preferences, you will see 5 options:
- Manage ‘favorites’ – up to 30 friends can be ‘starred’ as ‘favorites’, which prioritises them in Facebook’s algorithms.
- Unfollow people and groups you’ve selected to follow in the past. Don’t worry, they won’t know.
- Reconnect lets you put groups and pages which you’ve unfollowed back into your feed.
- Snooze – if you’ve snoozed any poster, you’ll see those here. More about snooze in the next paragraph.
- Reaction preferences – reactions are the little emoji icons you can select under posts. The like, love, cry, angry emojis. I’m not sure why you would want to hide these. Incidentally, the thumbs-up one is the lowest ranking, the ’emotion emojis’ feature higher in the algorithm.
Snooze Facebook Friends and Posts
On every post, you will see three dots on the top right.
If you’ve not yet clicked them you’re missing out, they contain a multitude of interesting possibilities!
One of those is to snooze for 30 days. The only thing this affects is their posts in your news feed. They are not unfriended and, unlike ‘block’, it is not permanent. You are muting them temporarily so you will not see anything they post on their profile for 30 days. They will, however, still see your posts in their news feed.
Again, unlike ‘block’, you can still go and look at their profile if you wish and you can still interact on Facebook and Messenger. Once the snooze period is over you will be notified. You can choose to continue the snooze or unsnooze them.
Who can you snooze?
Facebook snooze works for Facebook Profiles (individuals) Facebook Pages (businesses) and Facebook Groups. Profiles include both people in your friend’s list and not in your friend’s list. Basically, it works for everybody, the only requirement is that one of their posts must appear in your news feed because that’s where you will see the three dots that you have access to.
If it is a post shared from a different post you will see the option to snooze both or either. You cannot snooze your profile or page for somebody else. They have to do it themself.
How to Block Annoying Apps from Posting on your News Feed
We all have those friends who play Facebook games that fill your news feed with their farming skills and casino winnings! You don’t want to be a complaining crank so what do you do? Block the apps, of course!
Click those three little dots in the post and select to ‘Hide all from [name of app]”. Depending on your version of Facebook, you may then get the option to block all from that app.
Remove or change app permissions
For your own apps, which you have activated but no longer use, navigate to Apps and Websites in your Settings. The page will load with apps and websites, the majority of which you likely won’t recognise or remember adding! The buttons on the right will allow you to View and Edit, or Remove it completely.
Happy days!
In the next blog we look at how to “Plan for when you kick the bucket – choose a ‘Legacy Contact‘”
Digitally Done – giving you back a little bit of control!
