If you access Facebook from a computer rather than your mobile device, then it’s easy to make the desktop Facebook experience better using extensions.
Browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox offer many extensions that can change how you interact with Facebook, whether it’s by adding features or removing unwanted elements.
Keep reading to learn about the best Facebook extensions that you can install today…
1. Social Fixer
Available on: Chrome, User Script
Of all the Facebook extensions, Social Fixer is the most popular and most comprehensive solution. It offers an exhaustive list of features that help make Facebook a more enjoyable experience.
Some of the extension’s top tools include ways to turn off sponsored posts or force your news feed to show the newest posts first. It also has a news feed filter and a friend manager that will let you know when someone unfriends you.
You can even use Social Fixer to roll back the 2020 Facebook redesign so that the site displays the old layout instead.
Download: Social Fixer (Free)
2. F.B. Purity
Available on: Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera
Like Social Fixer, F.B. Purity is an all-in-one tool that can overhaul many aspects of the native Facebook home page when viewed in a browser.
Some of the best features include hiding ads, hiding related posts, hiding upcoming events, and hiding recommended games. You can also revert to the old Facebook layout and turn off auto-playing videos.
Download: F.B. Purity (Free)
3. Facebook Demetricator
Available on: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, Opera
Research suggests that Facebook is making us sad, and a part of the reason is that we tend to quantify our self-worth with the number of likes or shares our posts get.
Facebook Demetricator is a Facebook add-on that hides these numbers from your Facebook home page. For example, instead of seeing a fixed number, such as “15 people like this,” you’ll just see a “People like this” message.
Download: Facebook Demetricator (Free)
4. Privacy Badger
Available on: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera
It’s no secret that Facebook stores a massive amount of data about its users (and, perhaps more worryingly, its non-users). In fact, there are lots of ways Facebook invades your privacy, and many people are becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the level of intrusion.
If you want a way to stop Facebook from doing all that tracking, check out Privacy Badger. It’s an official extension from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that will prevent third-party advertisers from collecting information as you browse the web—Facebook included.
Download: Privacy Badger (Free)
5. Seen Blocker for Facebook
Available on: Firefox
We’re all familiar with the concept—when you read a message that someone has sent you on Facebook, the sender will know you have opened and read it thanks to a notification icon in their own chat window.
To prevent that from happening, check out Seen Blocker. It will let you read Facebook messages without activating the “message read” notification for the other person.
Sadly, this Facebook extension is only available on Firefox.
Download: Seen Blocker for Facebook (Free)
6. Photo Zoom for Facebook
Available on: Chrome, Firefox, Safari
Whenever you scroll through a Facebook feed, you’ll be acutely aware that all the photos are shrunk down on-screen. This is not unique to Facebook; all social networks deploy the approach, partly to help save data and partly because of the practicalities of using a computer screen.
However, if you want to see a photo in its full-size glory on Facebook, you need to physically click on it. If you enjoy studying a lot of friends’ pictures, that quickly becomes tedious.
Photo Zoom for Facebook removes the need to click. Once you have installed the extension, merely hovering over a photo on your news feed will show its full size.
Download: Photo Zoom for Facebook (Free)
7. Friends Feed
Available on: Chrome, Safari
If you’re old enough to remember the first few years of Facebook, you will know that the news feed used to be a much more fun place to hang out. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case.
You feed gets clogged up with posts that you have no interest in—either because other friends liked it or because a company has paid to get its content in front of your eyes.
The Friends Feed extension gets rid of these posts. The only updates you’ll see will either originate from your friends or from pages and people you actively follow.
Download: Friends Feed (Free)
8. Friend Convert
Available on: Chrome
If you are the manager of a large Facebook group, you might want to check out the Friend Convert Facebook Chrome extension. It lets you add friends to a group en mass, but also allows you to bulk-remove people from a group.
This is especially useful if the group operates on the premise of a membership, wherein the list of people with an active membership is continuously in a state of flux.
Download: Friend Convert (Free)
Available on: Chrome
Managing your Facebook profile, page, or group can be a labor-intensive task. Indeed, most businesses now have to employ an entire social media team just to keep on top of the never-ending slew of messages and contact requests.
Multiple Tools is a Facebook extension that specializes in automation. It has a dashboard that will display all your analytics, as well as ways to automate privacy settings for posts, message downloading, and incoming and outgoing friend and group requests.
You can also use the extension to block seen messages, block the message delivery mark, and even find out which groups your friends have joined.
NB: Remember, it is possible to use Messenger without Facebook if you don’t want a full account.
Download: Multiple Tools for Facebook (Free)
10. Image Cleaner
Available on: Chrome
Facebook doesn’t really want you to delete your photos. Consequently, there is no way to delete your old images in bulk.
Sure, you can delete pictures on an individual basis, and that’s fine for getting rid of an embarrassing snap from a night out. However, if you want to go on a photo purge, Facebook makes it near-impossible without entirely deleting your account.
Image Cleaner solves the problem. You can delete photos, albums, and videos with a single click (no confirmation screen). It also adds a checkbox to media items so you can select and delete multiple files at the same time.
Download: Image Cleaner (Free)
Should Facebook Natively Include These Features?
It’s somewhat sad that we have to turn to third-party Facebook extensions to access some of this functionality. If anything, their absence is an indictment of Facebook’s true guiding principles. As has been the case for several years, it is a case of profit over user experience.
Hopefully, Facebook changes its stance and makes the site more user-friendly, but we don’t have high hopes. For now, these extensions will have to suffice.
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