In today’s age of technology and virtual social networking, Facebook has pretty much turned into a big part of our lives. We depend on Facebook to make plans for us, to help us remember a friend’s birthday and to archive all of our photographic memories. Facebook has made connecting with people a lot easier and considering how well it is designed, it is a wonderful experience to use as well. But there are times when Facebook turns into more of a chore, like when Facebook spams your email address with oodles of notifications or when you get game invites that you’re never going to join. We tend to live with these annoyances how about we tweak a few Facebook settings to get rid of all these annoyances all together and make Facebook much pleasurable to use.[break]
Let’s tackle some of the annoyances that come with the joy of using Facebook and figure out how to fix them. But to get rid of most of these annoyances, you will have to install third-party add-ons to your web-browser but the installation is very easy. Chrome has its Chrome Web Store conveniently placed on the second page of its start-up screen and Firefox has an add-on button under its universal Firefox Menu. All you have to do now is to search for the specified plugin and add them by clicking on install. Remember that these browsers might ask you to restart your browser after the installation.
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1. Facebook Ticker
With the new redesign of Facebook and the introduction to the new Timeline interface, Facebook also added a pinned chat bar and something that they called the ‘Ticker’ that pushed real-time notifications to your page. The Ticker was not very well received on the internet and lot of Facebook users have had it removed and if you’re one of those people who would hate having every action performed by your friends pop-up on your profile then consider using Facebook News Ticker Remover for Chrome and Facebook Ticker Removal for Firefox. After the installation of these add-ons, you’ll be glad to know that the Facebook Ticker no longer shows up anymore.
2. Facebook Notification Emails
We all know how annoying it is to get a plethora of emails from Facebook regarding each and every notification you get. Facebook, in an attempt to stop you from quitting Facebook altogether, gives your email inbox a small push every time something happens on Facebook and this can be very annoying when you get a lot of notifications on Facebook and your important emails get lost in the folds of those unimportant ones from Facebook. Luckily, resolving this issue is very easy. Once logged into your Facebook account, click on the Settings button on the top right corner of your Facebook page, it looks like a tiny gear, and click on Account Settings.
Navigate to the Notifications tab on the Settings page and you should see an option called Email, change this setting to ‘Only notifications about your account, security and privacy” to stop unwanted notification emails from Facebook.
3. Facebook Game Invites
One of the biggest annoyances on Facebook is the constant notification we get from friends who are happily building up their farms or raising an army to conquer the virtual world of Facebook friends. If you’re one of those people who don’t like to game on Facebook then these invites are definitely going to annoy you. If you can identify those friends who keep sending you these invites, Facebook lets you block app invites from these friends. All you have to do is go to your Accounts Settings (under the gear icon again) and navigate to Blocking. Here, under Manage Blocking, there should be an option that says Block App Invites and a text box accompanying it. Just add your gamer friends to the list and never be bothered by their game invites again.
4. Facebook Picture Gallery
Viewing photos on Facebook can be really annoying if you happen to be on a slow internet connection. With the new Photo Gallery, viewing pictures has turned easier because it easily lets you shift to a picture and back again to your news feed but one of the biggest drawbacks of this feature is that it takes a lot of time to load. If you loved the old way of viewing photos on a separate page rather than on the same one, then try installing Revert Facebook Photo Viewer on the Chrome Browser and the Facebook Photo Theater Killer on Firefox (you will need to install a separate add-on called Greasemonkey on Firefox). Another alternative for making your photo viewing more pleasurable would be Photo Zoom for Facebook for Chrome and Facebook Zoom Picture for Firefox. These add-ons bring out a pop-up for any picture you mouse over while on Facebook.
5. Cleaning Up
With time, Facebook accounts tend to get cluttered up with junk applications and your news feed stops pushing you updates from the friends you’re most close to.
There is no other way to get by this but to keep your Facebook clean. When even you see an update from a friend or a page you don’t like, make sure to hide them (mouse-over a post, click on the down arrow that appears beside the post and click hide). Facebook is interactive and will learn from what posts you chose to hide and will work to hide most posts like them in the future. Also keep track of the apps that you have synced with your Facebook account and get rid of the ones you don’t want anymore. You can do this by navigating to your Account Settings and looking under the Apps option.
With a large online community of developers and programmers that use Facebook, there are a lot of solutions for any of your Facebook woes. Try out these solutions and see if you can get Facebook to behave.
If you have any other Facebook annoyances or anything fishy going on with your computer, cellphone or any other technological device, you can always send us an email and we’ll try our best to help you through it.
The writer is The Week’s much loved tech guru. Email us your tech queries at theweek@myrepublica.com and we’ll have him answer them for you.
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