Like it or not. Facebook is the most popular Social networking service currently and possibly the best way to keep in touch with your friends all over the world. But many people (including me) find Facebook really annoying at times, especially when more than 75% of notifications (marked with little red button at bottom right) are updates sent from numerous stupid facebook apps.
Over the last month or so, number of friends in my network who have started playing FARMVILLE has increased tremendously and so has my frustration. I was desperately trying to figure out how to only receive important notifications, such as comments from friends, and skip the stuff various applications send across. Would you like to know as well? Read on.
3 Ways to selectively turn off Notifications / Updates in facebook
Method 1
Take your mouse pointer to Top Right portion of the notification area, an Hide button with a drop-down appears as shown below
Click on Hide (Ex: Hide Farmville). This will hide all the updates from the app.
Method 2
In the small notifications roll-up window on the bottom right, an “x” will appear as you hover the mouse pointer over individual notifications. Clicking on it will remove any further notifications from that application.
Method 3
Click on the “Notifications” button at the bottom right corner in Facebook. Click on “See All.” On the right, you’ll see a long list of every application that sends you notifications, and you can turn them off by unchecking them.
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August 30th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Stupid applications is relative
FB and twitter are 2 diff entities, its like comparing apples and oranges!
August 30th, 2009 at 10:10 am
@Bhatta,
Well, I could have avoided naming the apps, but where am I comparing FB to Twitter?
September 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Aww! You beat me to it. I was about to write a post about this nifty thing. I only realized the Hide feature a few days ago and so far loving it!
Now my Facebook home is very clean, the way I want it!
November 30th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Great post. Though, I would love to figure out a way to turn off notifications on feed comments when someone else makes a comment on the same status where I have already. Most of the time I don’t know them and don’t really care.
Still want to see comments on my status updates, of course.
Anyway, well done!
December 13th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Thanks for the great post. Now I can see the real posts through the Farmville ones!
January 8th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Thank you very much for getting my Facebook to a normal state.
February 3rd, 2010 at 7:46 pm
Perfect! I had already found the Hide command on the wall and delightedly blogged it right away. But I didn’t know how easy it was to to remove the notifications, too. Thanks a lot for this post!
February 24th, 2010 at 7:11 am
Great, thanks!
Now, it seems, the app designers have figured out that people are “hiding” notifications so now they are spamming even harder by constantly creating “new” apps with slightly different names. This means that every time you go through and hide the notifications from apps, a whole new crop comes through!
I am going to be forced to completely hide those couple of friends I have who just love signing up for every new app that comes their way.
I want to hide *all* notifications from apps but it’s not something Facebook appears to allow.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:47 pm
I am one of those stupid people who play FarmVille and annoy my other friends greatly. To please those non-FarmVille friends I turned off the app using method 1 bacause I thought I could still see the updates on the Zynga website, but it also disappeared there, so now I’d love to find out how to turn back on! Any ideas?
February 24th, 2010 at 10:56 pm
LOL! Here you go – Click this link (don’t worry, it’s safe to click that) which will take you to your privacy settings page for apps. You must see all the blocked apps including Farmville. Click on ‘Remove’ next to it.
February 26th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Dear Raju If your answer was for stupid me, please see message on my apps site: Blokerede applikationer
Du har blokeret følgende applikationer. Dette beyder, at de ikke kan tilgå oplysninger om dig eller kontakte dig. De kan stadig forekomme på dine venners profiler. Denne indstilling er tilgængelig fra siden Anmodninger. Hvis du vil fjerne blokeringen fra en applikation, skal du klikke på Fjern.
Du har ikke begrænset nogen applikationer
Saying: You have no blocked applications. When I look at the apps, all the FarmVille ticks allowing it to be seen on facebook are put in.
But thank you for your answer anyway
March 14th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Thank you so much! Was seriously considering binning Facebook all together but now, no need. Thanks again.
March 20th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Okay, NONE of those three things work for me.
When I hover over “Hide” the option window doesn’t pop up….
When I click on the notification button the app notifications don’t show up (even though they’re still on the news feed)….
When I go to the list of applications to allow or to block Farmville isn’t there, either.
Did facebook fix these tricks or something?
March 20th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Weird! Looks like a problem with your browser, change your browser and check again
April 9th, 2010 at 6:24 am
As of now it seems theres no longer a dropdown. You have to click Hide first at which point youll be given a choice between hiding your friend or hiding the app. Still works great!
May 13th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
I have written a small script that hides _all_ postings that comes from any application. The only restriction is that it only runs with Chromium/Google Chrome because it uses a extension called “Personalized Web” that allows source code modification on-the-fly. I’ve published the script at my blog. The entry is written in German so perhaps you won’t understand it. But that doesn’t matter. At the end of the post there is an image that showes you what to do to use the script. If you have any problems using the script you can write a comment and I’ll try to help you. Try it out: http://crashsource.de/511-facebook-laestige-applikationen-aussperren-mit-chromium/
May 22nd, 2010 at 6:37 pm
It’s me again. I’ve enhanced the script above and now published it as a Google Chrome/Chromium extension. You can find it at the Google extension gallery. So it’s very simple to install and use.
This extension will hide all postings that are done by any application. It also has a whitelist so you can exclude the applications you like from being blocked. Sounds good? Give it a try.
May 22nd, 2010 at 7:27 pm
What all this does is simply /hide/ apps from your wall. But you are not hidden from the app! When your friend allows an app, it has access to his whole profile – and IIUC, it can read all your friend can read. Gave your friend access to your whole profile? Maybe his apps can see all of you, too.
FB is so unclear about this, and from what I understand how they think about privacy, it seems logical to me. So what I did, is I went to Connections, checked what apps my friends use most, and then went to the app page. There I blocked each app, all one by one, which took me a good part of an afternoon. Now I hope these apps can no longer see what I allow my closest friends to see.
May 31st, 2010 at 10:44 pm
To “hide” your chat status:
Account -> Privacy Settings -> Contact Information -> IM Screen Name.
Choose “Only Me”
Magic huh?
August 1st, 2010 at 12:45 am