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It’s funny how sometimes you can use an online service all the time, getting annoyed at little things without realising there’s an easy way to do something about it. Several of my friends who use Facebook almost every day recently told me how they hate always getting Facebook notifications for dumb games people want them to play, or updates about these games in their home feed. Obviously, if these people can be avid Facebook users without knowing there’s a fix, then there’s bound to be a few more of you out there too.
As I can’t even begin to imagine the horrors of using Facebook with all those annoyances in my face, I feel I should go back to basics here and make sure everyone knows how to get rid of them. If the post doesn’t apply to you, you no doubt know a friend or two who might be able to make use of the knowledge.
Getting Rid Of Unwanted Notifications
To sort out your Facebook notifications settings, head to the arrow in the top right of Facebook and choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu, then “Notifications” from the left hand side. You’ll see there are a lot of different options available to you.
Firstly, you can minimise the amount of notification emails you get with one click, by choosing to get just the important updates and summary emails. This will cut down the emails by a lot, but isn’t fine-tuned to your exact needs.
To be more specific about which notifications you want to get, look at each of the sections below that in more detail. You can choose which of the apps you have installed can email you, say exactly which actions on photos are worth getting an email for or not, etc.
For instance, you might want to know what people say about the links you post, but you could happily not notice when people share your links on their wall or when other people comment on links you’ve commented on. This picture shows how you would do that.
Head through each section and un-check the boxes you’re not interested in, making sure you save changes after each section is completed. This way, you’ll only get notifications of exactly what interests you and nothing else.
Don’t forget that notifications in Facebook show up in the top left of Facebook, in your mobile application, will be emailed to you and may also be sent via text if you have enabled Facebook Mobile Texts. It’s worth pruning your notifications to suit your needs.
Note: If you’re trying to get rid of notifications about logins How To Log Yourself Out Of Facebook On Other Devices And Improve Your Security [Weekly Facebook Tips] How To Log Yourself Out Of Facebook On Other Devices And Improve Your Security [Weekly Facebook Tips] For many Facebook users, it's good to occasionally brush up on your security knowledge and see if there's a better way you could be doing things. Despite Facebook's tendency to expose your information as publicly... Read More , you’ll need to go through your security settings.
Handy Tip: Filter Notifications Well In Your Email
Personally, I get almost all types of Facebook notifications sent to me, then I use really good Gmail filters 3 Things Pro Gmail Users Have Set Up in Their Accounts 3 Things Pro Gmail Users Have Set Up in Their Accounts Read More to ensure some of the email gets noticed and the rest may or may not ever be seen. I think a combination of fine-tuned notifications settings and email filters is the best way to do it.
Pruning Your Home Feed Of Annoying Apps And/Or People
The other similar annoyance people mention is that they see all sorts of random updates from apps they don’t care about in their home feed. If you see something you don’t like in your home feed, click on the down arrow to the right and choose “Hide…”.
This will then give you the option to either hide all stories from that application or change how many stories you get from that person or hide all stories from that page. It’s so easy that your feed will be cleaned up in no time. Don’t forget that you could also use friends lists Using Facebook Friends Lists For Interests Or Circles [Facebook Hack Or Tip Of The Week] Using Facebook Friends Lists For Interests Or Circles [Facebook Hack Or Tip Of The Week] Is Facebook driving you crazy? Most people who use Facebook generally view the home feed in its unfiltered form, which means they're seeing updates from friends, acquaintances and pages all lumped in together and shown... Read More to make sure you’re only viewing the friends you really care about.
Anyway, if you’ve hidden a few people and apps and realise that maybe you want to get them back again, you can do so by clicking on the edit button just to the left of the “News Feed” icon in the left hand side of your home feed.
This will give you a list of everything you’ve hidden. Now you can click the cross if you want to un-hide the applications from your Facebook news feed. Click “Save” before you exit.
What else have you noticed lots of your friends don’t know how to do on Facebook? What would you like to see explained in upcoming Facebook Weekly Tips?
I may be typing a comment that has the word "the" in it. FB will lift an entire phrase or sentence containing that word from God- only- knows- where and place it at the end of what I'd already typed. If I'm in a hurry, I might miss it and have to edit it out later. Is there a way to disable this?
Someone sent sent me a message on FB on a page I administer. I marked it read and answered it. Still, every time I go to this page, it says in the upper left corner in red that I have a message. It's the same message! How do I get rid of the red alert? Thanks.
Thanks for the tutorial. The thing I find annoying is Facebook bullying me into turning on notifications that I don't want. They want me to "See your notifications in the corner of your computer screen, even when Facebook is closed." I don't want that but there is not a "no thanks don't ask me again" button, only a "turn on" button. I have to wait for the pop up to load every time I log in to FB, so I can click "not now." It also pesters me in my drop down notifications. Under settings there is an option to turn it on, but not to say no and don't ask me again. I have complained to FB to no avail. Any suggestions? I have screen shots if you're interested.
Thanks again!
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You mention the "HIDE" feature. That's fine and well for some, but, I'm more interested in permanently deleting all my notifications forever, and not leave any availed to the click of a button and have them back. Piled up notifications are just a garbage dump of useless data slowing down things just because of their presence. Facebook doesn't want you to permanently delete all this info, for whatever possible third-party reason, and that's bull shit.
@ Chris Ralko...agreed...and when asked, I have 'told' 'facebook' I would like an embedded option to select a time frame for posts, status updates, likes, reactions etc. to be automatically deleted. A week, a month, a quarter, a year, a decade or a lifetime....
We keep birth certificates for a lifetime but most other stuff has a more defined periods...so why does facebook not give us that option to auto-delete...or even to mass delete posts, status updates, likes, reactions etc.
I currently delete them when they're a week or two old...one by one.
Will this get rid of the actual word "Edit" that is what is killing me the Most? From: Very annoyed ! Terrie
I accidently hit the Loved icon on a friends message, how can I remove it
A little late, but just hover over the icons and pick something else, such as Like. It will replace the love.
Periodically my Notifications gets flooded with comments from pages I have chosen to Hide, and even after I have left the group altogether. Checking Highlights and Off doesn't work either. I would not mind being advised of new posts, but I don't care how many people can think of a word beginning with T and ending in E, their birthday, or what city they are from.
how to get rid that annoying rainbow comments?
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How the hell do I stop getting texts from Facebook idiots? I am not on "F." I do not want to make an account. I was assigned a new number and bam, tons of messages from Facebook about morons on Facebook I don't know, nor give a rat about. I don't have an account, don't want an account and would never trust a company like Facebook with any information about me, that they sell to anyone with two pennies to give them ! Anyone who puts the kind of stuff on Facebook they ask for is a FOOL, especially if you understand English and read the agreement to be on Facebook
If you mean you were assigned a new telephone number and started getting all this garbage, it's possible that your number has been reassigned from someone else who had it. Contact your phone provider and ask for another number that has not been assigned to someone else before.
I still can't stop notifications from people who like or comment on articles I post replies to. Sometimes I get 50 likes and a notification for each one.....it continues for a year or more after I post.
whenever I open facebook the page looks like mine but it has a picture of a house covered in Christmas lights and I have to click on home to get to my page, I click the arrow that usually lets me say I don't want to see it, but it doesn't work on this thing, do you know how to get rid of it?
If it's not your picture, you're on the wrong page; one that is not yours. Look at the actual page address you're getting and make sure it's yours. Or cancel that page and start over, for safety's sake.
This is a relatively new thing that's happened from Facebook , I say relatively new because it just started less than a year ago and I've had my account for several. The problem is that no matter what page I go to I'm followed by sometimes multiple small rectangular blue boxes marked with F Share in them and although they are somewhat small they are still very intrusive as I have to guess what some words are when reading an article because it's covering the words in a sentence or directly over a picture and when looking at a sales ad there's one on every item that's for sale on that page. Like I'd want to share everything I buy with the world? How do I get rid of it once and for all!
It sounds like you want to use an extension like Facebook Blocker, which essentially blocks all the Facebook widgets from showing up elsewhere on the web.
http://webgraph.com/resources/facebookblocker/
Well , I went there and clicked on the Firefox download and a window popped up asking me what I want to open it with and I didn't know so I browsed and ended up clicking all of them one after another to open it and nothing worked. Any other ideas?
If you're using Firefox, you should just be able to open it in Firefox.
I don't have any other ideas to fix your problem right now, sorry. You could try asking on MakeUseOf Answers, though:
http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/ask
Good luck.
You might want to Google "ADBLOCKER" and install it free of charge. I've been using it for over 4 years now, and it eliminates all ads, no matter where you are on the internet. Never been happier!!
What I want to do is to get rid of Pages Feed altogether, though I suspect this is something Facebook will not allow me to do. I wish we could tailor Facebook to be exactlly the way we want it, not the way Facebook wants us to have it.
Every day I see that I have a large number next to Pages Feed. When I click on Pages Feed it says 'Recent updates from pages you're connected to'. I didn't know I was connected to any pages (what do they mean by 'pages' anyway?). But in any case, there don't seem to be any 'pages' when I go to Pages Feed - just that message. And of course the ever increasing red number, which is annoying.
In the list in the left hand column, I would like to be able to choose exactly what I have and don't have.
Sorry, I don't think it's possible to hide that number yet. But it is strange that you'd have a number there and then not see anything in the pages feed. Have you liked any pages?
Hi. I know how to do this on a computer but I don't have access to one right now. I'm using my iPhone 4, and my friend is trying to help me but it's not exactly what I need. He knows what I'm trying to do but I can't figure out how to do it on this. I want to clear my notification history from the icon. There r things on there that when I see the picture of the person it upsets me. So it'd be better to jus clear the history. On the computer like I said I know how to do that but whn I try on here I'm not being able to do it
Could you just block the person in the photo?
Other than that, I'm sorry, but I'm not an iPhone person so I can't really answer your question. You can try asking over at MakeUseOf Answers, though:
http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/ask
Good luck.
I do not like Facebook asking stupid question on my page Like how are you doing today?? How the hell do I get this off, and how did it get on my page?? I hate it!!
This one's new, so I don't know of any hacks to remove it yet. But it annoys a lot of people, so no doubt there will be something like a Greasemonkey script to remove it in the future.
I agree. Being British I also dislike the way every expression, spelling and use of language (how are you doing is just one small example) is American. I don't have any objection to American English, far from it, but for Americans. I live in France and of course the French can have Facebook in French - and most other languages are catered for. But they have no respect for the cultural identity of those who use other forms of English. Language is more than just about communicaton, it is about identily too, and the big intertnet companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc etc are too lazy to respect non-American English users. The end result, of course (and it is happening despairingly quickly) is that the other forms of English will disappear, along with much of what is important to our personal identities.
I see that happening all over the internet too. It's very annoying! Also, to a lesser extent it is infiltrating into other languages too (I'm in France too, BTW). Have you noticed that because of all the American shows being dubbed into French, the younger generation are starting to use phrases that are very American, even though they are spoken in French? It's a little odd.
The hidden thing is not on my newsfeed for something called Causes. I signed a petition with that organization and it has every person I sent it to on my newsfeed but I can't get rid of it. There is not the usual hide thing on the side. How do I get rid of this?
You might have to uninstall the app then. Here's some more info if you need it:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-spam-apps-ensure-app-privacy-weekly-facebook-tips/
"You’ll see there’s a lot of different options available to you." Please stop misusing "there's". It should be "there are"
Oops, you're right. Fixed. These things happen. :)
On the left side of the browser, you have Favorites, Ads, Pages, Friends, Groups, etc., all of which have feeds underneath them. For example the Close Friends feed or the feed for your school. Well, you get these annoying blue boxes next to each feed whenever there's been an update in that feed. One of the feeds under Pages is called Like Pages, which takes you to a gallery of pages you can like. I have a blue box indicating 4 that will not go away no matter how many times I go to that feed, refresh the page, and/or go through all the categories like Music, Movies, etc. I know it's just one little blue box with a 4 in it but how do I get rid of this?!?! It's so annoying to see and the fact that I can't get rid of it like I can the others is very frustrating. >:(
If you have Facebook Purity installed, you can enter a code into the CSS filter and it will remove that link from showing up. It's described on the following FBP page:
http://www.fbpurity.com/css.htm
I am an avid FB poster (maybe 5 to 10/day) and I wish to control the pushed notifications of my postings to my friends.
I realize that they have more control about receiving, (as mush as I do), however, I noticed that one friend's posts DO NOT appear in the notifications (or email) -- YET -- is in my feed. So it's a matter of when I pop in -- I may or may not see his posts. Now, if I want to see 'all' that he's up to -- i just go to his wall. No muss, no fuss -- I like that and wish to do the same as I do not want to annoy my friends with my stuff...
I've been all over the net and FB Help -- and zip about this. Everything I find is about control what I see -- but I want to control what goes OUT in the notifications when I post.
Any suggestions?
Hmm. You can't control what notifications are sent, but you could potentially create several different friends lists and post to whichever was more suited to each post, in order to not overload certain friends. I can't think of much else you can do though, sorry.
I'm no longer getting notifications about when people comment after me in a post. I would like to know, because sometimes I ask a question using the comments box, and if someone responds to me answering my Q, I would like to know about it! Does anyone know how to turn this function back on, even though I don't believe I ever turned it off...?
Go to Account Settings > Notifications and browse through the options there. Most likely (by what you say) you've unchecked one of the options under "Comments". Good luck!
Thanks for getting back to me.
The thing is, I am unable to find a comments option. All I see are the main areas "How you get Notifications" and "What Notifications you get," and neither area has a comments thing. I've clicked to edit the options of each subheading in each area, and I don't see comments anywhere. :(
Thanks for trying to help, though.
Aargh, Facebook! Yesterday, when I wrote the reply I could see it clearly in the Notifications section (there was a "Comments" section just like the "Links" section shown in the article). Today I see exactly as you say. They've gone and changed it again.
On the plus side, maybe that means your settings have been reset now.
Why would they do something so stupid??! (Although it IS Facebook, so why am I surprised?) I don't think my settings have changed, unfortunately. I still don't get any notifications about people commenting under me. I don't get any notifications about people liking my posts or comments, either, although this does seem to be limited to non-friends.
For example: I comment on someone's wall post on a page for a television show that I like. I don't know these people, but I would like to know if anyone "liked" my comment, or commented beneath me, just in case they were responding to or addressing something I said in my comment.... :[
Aargh, Facebook can be such a frustration at times. XD
I went through all the comments above. None of them could solve the annoying "Pages you may like" and "Suggested Posts" that appear on my Facebook page on my mobile. Nobody appears to have any idea how to stop these annoying ads. I have begun to hate Facebook because of this.
Same problem here. They drive me nuts. As I scroll through on my touch screen, I sometimes accidentally "like" those suggested posts and then have to go in and unlike them. Does anyone know how to get rid of suggested posts on mobile devices? (I don't know if they show up on the computer or not)
I've searched for a way to stop it too. It doesn't seem possible on mobile devices. Very annoying!
I have crap on my news feed & timeline. I want it removed. I did not ask for this inappropriate stuff. Girls asking to meet men or men asking to meet woman. Please help me get rid of this crap!!!
It sounds like you've got some spam apps. Check out this article to get rid of them:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/remove-spam-apps-ensure-app-privacy-weekly-facebook-tips/
Thank you,Angela,for this necessary and simple explanation of "how"- for me it is extremely useful!I am determined to go on learning "How...".Valentina Podchasova
I am getting annoying pages you might light on my iphone facebook app, I'm not seeing them online on my laptop, how do I stop them?
I think that's part of Facebook's promotional efforts whenever you view your home page. If you're on your laptop maybe you normally view a friend list or interest list and therefore don't see it.
I can not scroll to the bottom of my notifications, on facebook, to see all the posts. Help.
You might have to go through them one by one... Sorry.
Love the hide feature on FB!
Use it all the time.
Also read the tip on Disable Friends notifications to remove unwanted notices of that they are doing/gaming etc. I use that everytime I add a new friend for gaming that I only see their gaming info and nothing else!
All info to counter zombiebooks sneaky ways is a plus.
Security is not a strong point evidently
I used to be a facebook fanatic back when it was small and never had any money invested in the stock market. I used to play all the games, have over 1000 friends. Get invited to social events everyday. But then I woke up. Getting rid of my facebook was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I am so glad I no longer use any social web sites like that anymore. Now I have a "real life" outside of the computer, with "real friends" and I have never regretted it since then.
May God Bless you all
I am a huge fan of the "hide" option.
very useful! thanks!!
Not sure if this information has been posted, but you can click on an app in your news feed, and it will take you to a screen asking for permission to add it.
In small print at the bottom will be a link that says go to app center. Once there again in small print on bottom right hand side will be the option to block it. This will eliminate that app from ever appearing in your news feed again, thereby saving you from missing out on stuff you may or may not want to see by utilizing the "hide" feature. The "hide" feature is like a bulldozer, effective, but not subtle.
The "hide" function is like a bulldozer if you're hiding people, yes. But if you're just hiding the apps it's a bit more subtle. :)
Thanks for mentioning these steps though, as it's another way to do things.
I am getting porn notifications on fb,,, if I try to answer to just give them a piece of my mind, and tell them to bugger off, it just takes me to the site,, also there is no drop down arrow to delete those posts,,, what to do ???
Sounds like viral spam. Don't reply to those things! You can report the app to Facebook, but often they find out about them soon enough anyway.
Can you go to your timeline and delete it using the cross in the corner? Or go to your timeline and click on the "Activity log" you might see it listed there and be able to remove it from the timeline that way. Good luck!
Very useful, thanks for the heads up
Thanks a lot for this guide. Though I know a few bits of it, I'm able to hide a few more using this guide.
Thanks for the heads up on "How To Get Rid Of Facebook Notifications & Other Annoying Things You Don’t Want To See [Weekly Facebook Tips]".
This is my first comment but MakeUseOf materials helped in no small way.
Cheers
My daughter is being plagued by friend requests via "You may know this person" from total strangers, mostly from foreign countries, some in foreign languages. She wants to block this function and I've been trying to help her find a way to do it. No luck! Anyone know the trick?
It sounds like it's just suggesting people she may know rather than actually notifying her of a friend request. Maybe these people know her email address somehow (maybe via spam).
For actual friends requests, you can change the privacy settings so that only friends of friends can request to be a friend. That might help a little.
I'm having a problem logging in and out? When I log in it shows my profile picture and I am receiving points for everything I do as normal. When I go to the rewards tab it then won't allow me to buy anything with my points. It says I must loggin first? My picture is still showing along with my 2,109 points but I can not buy anything. Can someone please help me. Thank you very much.
Regards,
Donald
Weird. I'll pass this on to James and see if he can work it out for you.
Thanks so much, I just found out about acquaintance lists v friend lists a few days ago and its already helped a LOT. Now if only Facebook had a 'dislike' button...
Excellent tips!
I have a problem where one of my friends posts get reported in notifications. Only that friend and no others gets listed in notifications that same way. Do you have any idea how to stop that from happening short of unfriending that person?
Maybe you added that person to Facebook's "Close friend" smartlist and have set notifications to be given from anyone on that list. Try editing the "Close friend" list or changing your notification settings so that you don't get extra notifications from those friends.
I recently found this site and love it for the great information it shares - thank you. This post is JUST what I need. I comment very seldomly on FB and use it to keep up with what's happening in general but most of the time it's a bit of a bore. Any info to give us more control here I'm sure would be well received. It's a matter of taking the time to click around but specific instructions are wonderful!!
I've disabled most of my applications on my profile and once organized friends into lists and removed pages that were making my news feed full...
I also hide posts who doesn't help on my feed, to make it even more cleaner.
For notifications, I filter Facebook notifications on my email, so they don't fall directly into my inbox...
Sounds like you're pretty sorted when it comes to Facebook. :)
Thanks, this should really come in handy. I need to start filtering my news feed because 99% of my posts are for games and I would rather not see them every minute of every day. I already started blocking people and deleting people for posting pictures of disgusting stuff like beaten babies and stuff like that because I can't stand people posting that stuff. I don't understand why people do that. Does anyone know if you can tell it to not send so many notifications to your mobile phone? My android keeps getting notifications that I got requests in FarmVille and its getting annoying. I don't even play FarmVille.
If you fix your notifications up as shown in this article (and remove notifications from Farmville) it should stop them on all your devices.
is there a way to search for and jump to a particular post ?
my objective is to be able to quickly go to the last post I read yesterday, and begin there moving towards the top which is in the order the posts were written.
I already post a ================= to Only Me, when I'm up to date reading all, but it take a lot of time to scroll down to 23 hours ago...
Have you tried reading our website through our RSS feed? Add it to an RSS reader like Google Reader and you're good to go.
here is our feed, http://feeds.feedburner.com/makeuseof
You could also just scroll back to where you left off and work backwards... But RSS is the best idea. :)
Great article. i get asked these kinds of questions all the time by those that are not too savvy on internet and are curious about Facebook.
You're reading my mind! This is exactly what I wanted to do TODAY! Now I don't have to look up how to get rid of the unwanted invites. - THANK YOU!
I just would like to know how to cancel definitively my identity/account from that crazy Facebook
Thank you for confirming my total refusal to get involved in any way with this viral horror Facebook.
I trust that my email address will remain secret?
This should tell you what you need to know:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/permanently-delete-facebook-account-weekly-facebook-tips/
another way to fight those silly notifications
is delete your account and get a life
loool
kidding
after all those time i wasted on farmville
hehehhe
There is a viral video, that has appeared on the left side of my Facebook page , and I can't find any options to get rid of it. I don't open it, but it is there all the time.
It came automatically through another friend, who didn't send it, but clicked on the link: "You can remove Timeline" . So - everyone on that friend's list got one!
Can you help? And where do I look for your answer ?
Wow, that sounds like a particularly dodgy viral scam. There's plenty similar to this, but usually each user needs to click something.
To get rid of it, you should be able to go to your timeline, click the cross in the corner and hide everything from the application.
this has made life SO much easier! haha
The one thing I would love to see is a way to block all invites/news/notifications from all Facebook games that other people play. It's fine to be able to block them individually as they come up, but I have zero interest in ANY of them and should be able to say "Hide ALL notifications from ALL of your crappy games".
There used to be an option to do this. Plus you could block all notifications from a particular person. Can't see that option any more, unfortunately!
Yes. Me too. Soooo tired of getting Candy Crush invites.
Its so annoying that i marked their email as spam :D
I wish there was a way to disable all the games and apps spam without disabling all platform apps and rendering my phone into a 'less useful thing'. But those tips are good to know and reminded me of checking my settings again. Unfortunately those tend to change on a regular basis.
Now a days we have a lot of spam due to facebook emails ..thanks a lot
I like to keep my facebook profile clean. I regularly check my preferences and settings.
I've abused the 'hide' option ever since I found out about it. Makes my newsfeed a lot more pleasant.