5 Hidden Facebook Tricks You Need to Know

Here's how to disable read receipts, maximize photo privacy, and more

More than 1 billion people regularly use Facebook, but that doesn’t mean they’re all well-acquainted with the social media site. It’s constantly being refreshed, and between profile redesigns,new apps and privacy changes, it’s hard to keep up.

Here are five tricks to make sure you’re on top of your Facebook game:

Read the first Facebook message you ever sent to a friend

Get ready for a trip down memory lane (and for a great #tbt) without endlessly scrolling through conversations. The easiest (but slowest) way to see the first Facebook messages you sent to a friend is to download all your Facebook data, which you can do by going to General Settings and following the bottommost link. This can take hours or days because the function compiles every single message you’ve ever sent, among other data.

Here’s a faster way. On Facebook for desktop, go tohttps://m.facebook.com/messages/. (This is the mobile site, and its URLs display differently, which you’ll use to your advantage.) Now click on a friend’s chat. Right click on the button See Older Messages… and open the link in a new tab or window. In this new page, you’ll see a long URL with a lot of numbers. Look for the part that says &start=7. The “7” refers to the indexed messages that appear; your messages are indexed from 1, 2, 3 … from most recent to least recent. You’re going to want to set that number as close to the total number of Facebook messages you’ve ever sent to your friend — this will get you straight to the oldest messages.

To get this number, open Facebook messages on the desktop link:https://www.facebook.com/messages/. Click on a friend’s chat, and scroll up — you’ll see something like Load Older Messages (51583), which is approximately how many messages you have with this friend. Swap in that number in the long URL from before, and reload the page. From here, you’ll have to click a few more times onSee Older Messages… — and now you’ll be back to the very first message.

Disable read receipts

Trying to ignore someone? Then you’re probably not a fan of read receipts — that note that says “Seen ” followed by the time or date you opened the message.

There’s no way to disable read receipts within Facebook, so you’ll have to turn to third-party applications. These only work for desktop browsers. For Chrome users, there’s the Facebook Unseen App. There’s also Crossrider’s Chat Undetected, which works for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

ABC News warned last year to attempt any of these methods at your own risk, as Facebook’s Terms of Service state, “You will not do anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working or appearance of Facebook.”

Remove “Last active” time on Facebook Messenger

Here’s another common grievance for those concerned about their activity privacy — that line that says something like “Active 1m ago” on Facebook’s mobile Messenger app.

Unfortunately, there’s no dependable in-Facebook solution or third-party app that can get rid of this feature. The only surefire method is to delete Facebook Messenger from your phone, and use Facebook only on desktop, or through your mobile browser.

CONTINUE: Time.com

SOURCE: Time.com