Facebook, one of the oldest and most popular of social media apps still has many tricks up its metaphorical sleeves. For instance, do you wonder how much time you're spending on the site? Or perhaps you're looking for that one picture that you liked five years ago?
Whatever be your woe, Facebook is likely to have a solution. Here, we present to you 10 tips and tricks that Facebook has that you might not even have known about.
1. If you want to track done some particular photo that you liked a while ago, well, it's easier than you might think. Facebook has a feature that allows you to see what pictures you and even your friends have liked in the past. All you have to do is go to the search bar and type "Photos liked by ___ (the name of the person)". After you hit search, Facebook will show you a collection of photos liked by that person.
2. Do you think you spend too much time on Facebook? If you care to put a number to it, Facebook lets you check just how much time you spend on the social media platform. They will display a bar graph mapping the time spent on the app over the last week and also your average usage time. Well, if you're that person who just can't resist checking their phone constantly or spending hours on social media, that brings us to the next point.
3. Limiting your Facebook usage. No, we're not talking about some painful exercise in self-control. Facebook if being used from the app, will give you an option to set a timely reminder, following which the app will inform you that you've spent quite enough time on Facebook. But a mere warning cannot always deter us. and in such a case, you can use Screen Time (for iOS) and Digital Wellbeing (for supported Android Pie devices) to enforce a strict time limit. This can also be used by other apps.
4. Re-watching content that you accidentally refreshed away from your feed. Say you were engrossed in a Facebook post and accidentally refreshed your screen. Don't fret quite yet, because Facebook has something that allows you to see the things that you've technically speaking already seen. Simply go to Facebook and add “/seen” at the end of the normal URL. to see that content again.
5. Downloading all your Facebook data. Facebook has been around for a while and most people have now amassed a digital narrative of their best and worst moments on the social media platform. So, if you want to download all your personal data (photos, videos, posts, messages and more), just head over to the 'Facebook Settings' section. There, click on the 'General' tab, and on the option that says 'Download a copy of your Facebook data'. After that, click on 'Start My Archive' and Facebook will make you enter your password again, just to verify, and then gather your data and send you an email once the download is ready.
6. What LinkedIn is to jobs, Facebook can be too. Search for nearby open jobs on Facebook with the 'Jobs' page under the 'Explore' section of Facebook.
7. Accidentally typed gibberish or sent the wrong message to the wrong person? Facebook Messenger now allows you to un-send a message, but only within 10 minutes of sending it. The process is easy. Simply long-press on the message and then tap on the 'Remove' button. You can either “Remove for everyone” or “Remove for you”. Keep in mind that to unsend a message you have to select the former.
8. You have a new Facebook page that you want people to like. Can you imagine how long it would take to invite your Facebook friends one by one? Although this is how Facebook lets you do it, you can use an installation to speed up the process. A browser extension dubbed 'Facebook Invite All' that can be added to Chrome or Firefox will let you invite everyone at once.
9. If your friend list has people speaking a multitude of languages, you may want to post updates in several languages as well. Facebook's built in translator isn't the best, and so another alternative for Pages at least can be the 'Post in Multiple Languages' option. It can be found in the 'Page Settings' section under the 'General' tab. After enabling the feature, you will see a small option saying 'Write post in another language' when you write an update on the page.
10. If you're a Facebook app user, you can also check out nearby places and people. Simply head to the last tab in the app and tap 'Nearby Friends' or 'Nearby Places' before heading out to explore.
