How To Get Rid Of Facebook Notifications & Other Annoying Things You Don't Want To See [Weekly Facebook Tips]
by Angela Alcorn
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's 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.
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 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 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?
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