17 Hidden Facebook Features Only Power Users Know

Despite its issues (and there are many), Meta’s Facebook remains today’s foremost digital public square. Politicians and journalists gravitate toward X/Twitter, Gen Z loves Snapchat and TikTok, and Facebook fills the gaps everywhere else. A few years of scandals have yet to make much of an impact on Facebook’s bottom line. Monthly active users on the platform in the US/Canada continue to go up.

Facebook’s website and apps offer a bevy of personalization options. Read on to awaken your inner social networking guru.

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1. Listen to Music on the Spotify Miniplayer

(Credit: Spotify)

Spotify Premium members in select markets can listen to songs and podcasts inside the iOS and Android Facebook app. Spotify Free users can also tap into the feature via shuffle mode, with ads. When you or a friend share a song to Facebook from the Spotify app, you can press play and listen to it as you continue scrolling through Facebook.

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2. The Inbox You Don’t Even Know About

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

If you’ve been a Facebook user for a while, then you probably have a folder full of unread messages that you didn’t even know existed: the Message Requests folder. This is where Facebook sends all the missives from people you’re not currently friends with. It could be filled with old high school flings reaching out or a bunch of Nigerian spammers. Who knows? Only one way to find out!

To review these messages, navigate to Facebook.com, and click the Messenger icon (the word balloon with the lightning bolt) at the top of your Facebook home screen. Click See All in Messenger at the bottom to go full screen. Click the three-dot ellipsis menu icon and select Message Requests. Then you’ll see all sorts of messages from strangers.

There may be an entry called See Spam showing those who tried to contact you, but who’ve likely been kicked off the service after being reported by others. Delete them with joy.

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3. See All the Friends You Requested

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

What about all the people you asked to be your friend who ignored or deleted your request? Facebook keeps track of that. Go to facebook.com/friends/requests. First you’ll see a list of the people who have requested your friendship, if any are outstanding. Click View Sent Requests for a list of the people who hate you. Or maybe they just don’t check Facebook that much. Probably both.

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4. See Who’s Snooping In Your Account

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

Want to know if someone is logged into your Facebook account without your permission? Navigate to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Activity Log > Security and Login Information and look for Where You’re Logged In. Here, you will find all your active Facebook log-ins from desktop or mobile devices, even across apps (like the Facebook app vs. the Messenger app). It will (usually) provide data on the location, browser, and device. If something seems fishy, log out from individual devices (click the three-dot menu > Log Out). This comes in handy if you log in to a friend’s laptop or a public computer and forget to log out.

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(Credit: Facebook)

It’s a good idea to throw in some additional layers of security on your Facebook account. Here are three smart things you can do to protect yourself:

1. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication. It’s a good idea to implement 2FA on all your accounts. That means if someone wants to access your account on a new device, they’ll need your password and a code generated by an authenticator app or sent via text. You’ll find it here.

2. Get alerts about unrecognized logins. If somebody logs in to your account from an unrecognized device or browser, Facebook can let you know. (If you use a VPN, you may notice you get those warnings about yourself if the VPN server is in a different state or country. That’s the price of vigilance.)

3. Perform the Privacy Checkup. This is a quick spot to visit that will help you see what you share, find out how people find you, set your ad preferences when viewing Facebook, and more.

FYI, if you used to trust the Trusted Contacts feature, where a friend could be designated to help you access Facebook if you got locked out, stop trusting it. Meta turned the feature off. Instead, make sure you have accurate phone and email information entered in your account.

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6. Restrict ‘Friends’ From Seeing Posts

(Credit: Facebook)

You can control who sees your Facebook posts—everyone, friends, friends of friends, or just specific people. If you have “friends” you don’t want snooping on all your posts, restrict their access. Go to the profile page of the friend you want to restrict. Click the Friends button in gray, and select Edit Friends List > Restricted. That friend will no longer see what you post unless it’s a public post. You can check who’s on this list by going to facebook.com/bookmarks/lists and clicking Restricted.

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7. Unfollow People Without Unfriending

(Credit: Facebook)

In theory, all your Facebook friends are actually people you like, and want to hear from, but that’s not realistic. Nevertheless, it would be rude to defriend your aunt or your chatty high school classmate. Take the easy way out and Unfollow them. Their posts won’t appear in your News Feed, but you’ll still be “friends” as far as Facebook is concerned. Unfollow from the News Feed by selecting the ellipsis/three-dot-menu and clicking Unfollow [friend]. Or on the person’s profile page, select Unfollow from the Friends menu. They won’t be notified and you can scroll in peace.

Re-activate following them later by going back to their profile page and selecting Friends > Follow. If you like them a lot now, select Favorites and you’ll never miss their posts.

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8. Save Posts for Later

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

Facebook makes it next to impossible to go back and find something that you whizzed past while scrolling. Don’t lose that tasty-looking recipe or interesting article; save it for later. Tap the ellipsis menu in the top right of any post and select Save post or Save to watch later from the drop-down menu. This will send the link to your Saved folder.

Where’s your Saved folder? You actually won’t see it until you save something. Then a little purple Saved ribbon appears in your left-hand favorites bar on the desktop; tap the hamburger menu on mobile. Saved Posts don’t expire but they might disappear if the original poster deletes it. If you’re a prolific saver, group your saved items into Collections to keep them organized.

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9. See How Much Time You Spend on Facebook

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

Are you concerned you spend too much time on Facebook? On the mobile app, you can now see exactly how long you spend on the site each day. Click your avatar pic at the lower right and select Settings & Privacy > Your Time on Facebook. The bar chart under See Time will display how many minutes per day you were on during the last week; swipe left to see Daytime vs. Nighttime usage, and total number of visits. Under Manage Your Time, set a Daily Time Reminder to be notified when you’ve been on the app a certain amount of time, and create a Quiet Mode schedule to mute push notifications.

You can also use the built-in iOS Screen Time feature under Settings to check your overall social network usage, and set a limit—maybe an hour per day on all social media (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more.) Android users can try Digital Wellbeing. There’s no desktop equivalent for Facebook.com, but you could use the RescueTime extension to monitor yourself on Facebook and beyond.

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10. Download a Copy of All Your Facebookery

(Credit: Facebook)

Want your own personal copy of everything you’ve ever shared on Facebook—for posterity or to save before you delete your account? Every post, every image, every video, every message, and chat conversation (not to mention all the settings you probably don’t even think about)? Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Accounts Center > Your information and permissions > Download Your Information. Follow the directions from there to decide what you want to download (you may have multiple profiles and can even get your Instagram data), specific information you may want, etc.

Depending on how much stuff you have saved on your profile(s), it could take a while for Facebook to compile it; you’ll get a notification when it’s ready to download.

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(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

Everyone on Facebook will die. Eventually. In anticipation of this unavoidable truth, Facebook lets you name a legacy contact who will manage your account after you are gone. Your legacy contact can write a pinned post for your profile, respond to new friend requests that come after you have passed, and update your profile and cover photo (in case your final image is you in an ironic SpongeBob Halloween costume). They can even download your Facebook data, minus any messages you sent/received. You could also choose to have your account deleted after you die.

Facebook will send you an annual reminder to check your legacy contact, unless you turn that option off. Go Settings & Privacy > Settings > Accounts Center > Personal Details > Account ownership and control > Memorialization on desktop or mobile to select or change your legacy contact.

If you’re a legacy contact for someone who’s died, use this Memorialization Request form to tell Facebook about the person and ask to get their account memorialized. You may have to supply a copy of the death certificate or a link to an obituary to prove it.

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12. Edit Your Ad Preferences

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook’s business is built around providing marketers with detailed information on its users’ interests, but you can keep your ad experience in check. Go to Accounts Center > Ad preferencess. The first tab is Customize Ads, starting with Advertisers You’ve Seen Most Recently, which you can hide one by one. You can view a list of all those you’ve hidden, as well as a list of ads you’ve clicked if you want to hide them now. Click into Ad Topics and you’ll see a few targeted toward you. Drill down to Your add topic choices and set up what you want to see less of.

The Manage Info tab can be used to limit the amount of data Facebook gets on you from partners, the categories they use on you, and the businesses that have you in an audience list for targeting. You can even limit the Facebook-created ads you see on other websites. All of these controls are limited, but they’re better than nothing. The worst part is you have to click through them one by one.

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13. Apps Can Be Axed in Bulk

(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

What you can bulk delete are the apps and websites that use Facebook for log-ins. Go to Settings > Apps & Websites and you’ll see the apps/sites where you used FB credentials. Select a bunch and log out of them. When you ever back to that site/service, it’s best to do a login with a unique username and password rather than use Facebook for the login; better yet, use a password manager.

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14. Turn Off Autoplay Videos

(Credit: Facebook)

Do you hate it when a video starts playing automatically? Kill that “feature.” Go to Settings > Media and set Auto-Play Videos to Off. Stat. You won’t regret it. If you do it on the desktop, it also turns off auto-play on your mobile devices, and vice versa.

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15. Stop With the Birthdays

Facebook will tell you every morning who among your friends is celebrating their arrival on Earth. If you hate that and despise birthdays in general, stop the notifications. Go to Settings > Notifications. There are many things here you can curtail, such as highlights of what you did on that day in the past, activities of your closest friends, the launch of new local Pages, etc. But not far down is the option to turn off the birthdays.

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(Credit: Facebook/Eric Griffith)

16. Kill Outside Activity Tracking (For the Moment)

Facebook is all about advertising, so it’s tracking your every move online where it can, thanks to it’s ad network and any outside partners. In fact, you can get a look at what Facebook calls “Your Activity off Meta technologies“–it’s like a laundry list in the Accounts Center of all the vendors reporting into Meta about where you go online via apps and websites. Click into it to see Your Activity and after you get over the shock, you can also clear previous activity, and even disconnect specific activity so future interactions never, ever get sent toward Meta/Facebook ever again.

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(Credit: Facebook)

17. Confirm That You Are You

Everyone knows Facebook has a real identity theft problem; all it takes is multiple friend requests from your elderly aunt who you are already friends with on Facebook to see that. The service offers an Identity Confirmation tool to make sure you are you, however, to help kill off the frauders of the future. Facebook wants you to do this especially if you run ads about social issues or politices, or feel you need extra protection. For the former, it goes full snailmail, sending you verification codes to your mailbox and ask for a digital copy of your actual ID which it claims to encrypt and store. It may also ask for a video selfie of you proclaiming who you are. You can request that Meta only keep these for 1 year. Put that ID storage option to the test only if you must.

For the latter—getting extra account protection—it defaults back to the extra security we already mentioned in step 4 above.

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