As you may have noticed, Facebook has been promoting its new “close friends” list in the past couple of months. You might have seen it when logging into Facebook: the top part of your news feed, which is often used by Facebook to promote new features, suddenly offers a way to add your best friends to a special list, where you will be able to follow them separately. So far so good. Several people I know saw this suggestion, and used it to add friends to the list right then and there. After all, many people have lots of Facebook friends, and it could be nice to distinguish your real friends from the mere acquaintances or colleagues.

However, Facebook being Facebook, there’s almost always a catch. In this case, there are two: One, once you add friends to your close friends list, you start getting extra notifications about them. A friend of mine told me she’s suddenly getting all sorts of random Facebook notification on her smartphone, and at first she didn’t even realize it was related to close friends. Two, Facebook makes it very easy to add friends to the list from the top of the news feed, but it’s not as easy removing them. After you’ve figured it out it’s not complicated at all, but finding it among all of Facebook’s different features can take some time.

Below I will show you in a few quick steps how to disable notifications for close friends, control what updates you get from them or remove friends from the list entirely.

Disabling Notification & Choosing What Updates You See

Sometimes, the hardest part in the whole process is finding the Close Friends page. If you’re lucky, you’ll find it right there in your sidebar on your Facebook home. Look for “Friends”, and find “Close Friends” under it.

disable close friends notifications

If you can’t find it there, and it’s not always there for some reason, try clicking “More”. This should give you access to all your friends lists. Don’t be tempted to click the pen button which usually means edit; it doesn’t.

disable close friends

Just for general knowledge, this is where you can create new friends list, if you wish.

Now that you’re on your close friends list, you can start by disabling those pesky extra notifications. Click on “Notifications” on the top right, and choose “Off” to disable completely, or choose to get them just on Facebook or both Facebook and Email. If all you see is On and Off, it means you have summary emails enabled – a great thing to have.

disable close friends

Now you’re rid of notifications and you can enjoy your close friends’ updates without the extra annoyance. But Facebook offers an even more fine-grained way to control what you see from close friends, which could be useful: Click on “Manage List”, and choose “Choose Update Types…”.

disable close friends

Now you can decide which updates you want to get from close friends. For example, you can choose to see only new photos, status updates, comments and likes, and ignore annoying game requests.

disable close friends facebook

All these settings can be configured the same way for other friend lists you’re using, such as acquaintances, or any other custom list.

Removing Friends From Close Friends List

You may have added friends to this list just to see what happens, you may have done it on a whim and now wish to change it, you may have considered someone as a close friend and then changed your mind – many things can happen that would make you want to remove friends from this list. Here is how to do so.

On your close friends page, click on “Manage List” (top right) and this time choose “Edit List”. You can also click the “See All” link above the thumbnail list on the right.

disable close friends facebook

In the dialogue that opens, you can see all the people on your close friends list, and remove any or all of them. Simply hover over a friend’s picture to find the tiny X. Click it to remove that friend from the list. If you want to remove everyone from the list, you’ll have to click all their Xs one by one.

disable close friends notifications

That’s it! Close friends should never bother you again, now.

For more about Facebook lists and other useful Facebook tips, check out Aaron’s 5 Best Hidden Facebook Tricks You Should Make Use Of.

Do you like the close friends list? Are you making use of it or is it just an annoyance? Are there any Facebook tips you want to share? The comments are your playground!