Facebook has become one gigantic part of our lives both on personal and professional levels. Billions of users log in and connect and engage with families, friends, and colleagues. With all these conversations going on we sometimes lose site of the fact that we are at the whim of Facebook’s updates. Sometimes we don’t know even when a new feature has been added until we see changes in our news feed. The news feed is the life blood of Facebook. Everything we want to engage with is there and Facebook has done its darnedest to give you exactly the stuff you engage with the most. But sometimes the news feed and other Facebook features needs a bit more adjusting. Here are a few ways in which I keep the “noise” away from my news feed.
Stop auto play on Videos
When Facebook rolled Auto Play feature on videos in the news feed it was rather annoying as I scrolled through and videos started playing automatically. Fortunately, Facebook does allow the user to turn off the auto play. Go to Facebook settings and from the left side down at the bottom click the Videos icon. In Video settings set auto-play to off, and if you would like, adjust the quality of the video when played.
Add pages and groups as favorites
This feature has been around since about 2012 or so. If you belong to a lot of groups and pages like I do you might have some trouble finding the group or page to visit from those lists on your profile page. Before I started using Favorites, I would scroll the list, sometimes having to click the “more” link, scroll some more, and find the group or page link. By adding a group or page to your Favorites lists it removes the need for the scrolling and multiple clicks, and it also physically moves the group or page link right under your Favorites section. Here’s how you do it. On the desktop or laptop the left side shows you groups and pages that you belong to/like respectively, if you mouseover any of the group or pages names you’ll see a small cog wheel appear. When you click it next to a page it will give you the option to Add to Favorites. When you click the cog next to a group you have the options to Add as a Favorite, Edit Settings, and Leave Group. When you click edit settings it will give you an option to turn off notifications. If you are an admin of a group or page you will see additional options.
Once you have added your pages and groups to your Favorites you can then rearrange them in the order you would like but clicking on the small cog to the left of the name.
Minimize game invites and posts
I don’t judge anyone who wants to play the games that are on the Facebook platform, I just don’t want to see any of what they do in my news feed. As far as I know there is no way to turn off game requests or game updates from friends before you start seeing them, but as these posts start to show up in my news feed, I click the down arrow on the top right side of their post, and click don’t show me any of this “game”. In extreme cases I may Mute the person all together.
This is not a quick fix. It takes a bit a time to gradually go through as these posts pop up in the news feed and opting not to see posts of this game. It does help minimize the more popular Facebook games quickly. Also I found that Facebook catches on to you doing this and minimizes are stops these posts coming in to your news feed.
Stop notifications
Once you share something on Facebook – a post or comment, or even a Like, Facebook automatically marks you as following the conversation. So anyone who comments or likes your post, or comments or likes a post that you liked or commented on you get a notification. On more popular posts, this can be overwhelming. Here’s how to limit or stop this notifications on the post itself, in settings, and on your smart phone.
To stop notifications on the post, click the down arrow on the far right of the post, and select “Turn Off Notifications.”
There is a rather large Notifications area in Facebook settings. Go through and edit each option to your liking.
On the iPhone go to Notifications => Facebook and adjust settings. On an Android go to Sound and Notifications => App Notifications => Facebook and adjust settings.
Security settings
About once a month or so I check my security settings on Facebook. In particular I check “Your Browsers and Apps” section and if necessary remove apps that have access to my data. But be careful as you can disable some of the functionality of the app if you remove a piece of your data it was using.
