Some people find it pretty hard to imagine life without Facebook. But with the almost constant updates and changes, it can get a little hard to manage. The simple things we used to be able to do with one click now look entirely different, or they’ve disappeared entirely.

We discovered some Facebook tricks so that you’re living your best social media life.

Make Messenger more accessible

We have too many apps already! Why did they think we wanted to have two separate Facebook apps? You can declutter your app situation by using the browser on your smartphone to open the messenger app without the actual app. You can see a second method here.

 

Go incognito

Disable the “seen” feature in Facebook messages so nobody will ever invade your privacy again. You can also use it to avoid particular things, but that’s none of our business. Check here if you use Google Chrome, and here for non-Chrome users.

 

Say bye-bye to ads

Stop annoying Facebook ads from stalking you by turning off the tracking through the app. Check the “Limit Ad Tracking” button. It makes a world of difference. There’s a number of other ways you can do it here.

 

Amp up your search skills

Facebook search is great. But if you want to really step up your search game you can use the Facebook graph search. The results will make your day. You can search for specific things like 'gyms near me with the best playlists', and so on.

 

Use GIFs

Who doesn’t love a good GIF? If you haven’t been able to express your emotions with animations yet, then all you need to do is head to Giphy. Do a search for what you want, copy the URL and paste it into either your status or a comment.

Note: they’re not officially GIFs as Facebook banned those, because they hate us having too much fun, but this is the next best thing.

 

Get a privacy check-up

Just to make sure your privacy settings are exactly how you want them, go and utilise Facebook’s three-step privacy review. Considering all the updates that happen it’s a good idea, especially if you want to disable that pesky photo search feature.

 

Find your friends when they're nearby

No, you don’t need to tell all 600 of your friends where you are, unless you really want to. The Nearby Friends feature however doesn’t just let people know where you are. You can make a private trusted friends list that will allow you to check if your friends are nearby. No more FOMO.