How do I switch back to the old Facebook layout?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.com.
It's a common question.
Here's an example.
"I want the old Facebook.
I hate the way it is now.
How do I switch back to the old Facebook layout?"
This is a question that comes up every so
often, usually around major changes to a user interface like that of Facebook's.
But it also comes around for a multitude
of different services that are also periodically changing their user
interface, changing what they look like, changing how they work.
The very short answer is you may be able to in the short run,
but in the long run, you are seriously out of luck.
Your best response
is to learn the new interface and get used to the new interface.
I'm not even going to say learn to love the new interface.
You may or may not over time actually do that.
But the bottom line is what you need to do
is learn to tolerate the new interface and move forward.
Now, the reason I say that is
that services like Facebook and in the past, Hotmail or MSN or Yahoo!
Or even Google, they do periodically change their user interface.
It's intentional.
They're attempting to improve the user interface based on current technologies,
current trends, making new features available, whatever.
Honestly, whatever their reasons, it doesn't matter.
They do make changes.
They will make changes.
One thing that is unchanging about this industry are the changes.
So at some point, Facebook will make changes to their user interface.
As I record this, we're a couple of months
past some really major changes that they made that a lot of people were upset with.
Now, for a while, they may make the old version available
either as an option to switch back to or for a while.
They only make the new version available to some, but not all of the users.
Eventually, though, that goes away.
So my recommendation there is as soon as
you see that there's a new interface coming, prepare yourself,
begin getting used to it, try it out, see what you do and don't like about it
and figure out if it is a showstopper for you.
There are definitely changes that are so
massive and so unwanted by individuals that they'll stop using a service.
I don't know if that works for Facebook or
not, just given how tied so many people are to it.
But the bottom line is that new interfaces
coming and the sooner you have an opportunity to get used to it,
to start understanding how it does and doesn't work for you,
the better off you'll be when the change is ultimately forced on you.
Now, whenever there's a large change like this, there are often hacks.
What I'll say are opportunities for individuals to say, hey,
if you install this extension or do this thing or start from this you URL or
something else, everything's back the way it was.
The short answer for that is it may work for a while, but it rarely,
and I do mean rarely, works 100 percent and it almost never lasts.
The reason being that once the new interface becomes popular,
becomes entrenched, becomes what the default user interface is
for a site like Facebook, they make the old one go away.
You can't go back to it because it's not there anymore.
So that's the inevitability.
So with that having been said, I do want to point you to a couple
of utilities, a couple of browser extensions that can make Facebook better.
They may not necessarily be able to get you the old Facebook back because as we
saw, the old Facebook will eventually go away.
It just won't exist anymore.
But these two browser extensions can and do modify the user interface
for Facebook in such a way that many of the common annoyances can be dealt with.
And what a lot of people would say is
a more rational way than what Facebook is presenting.
Social fixer is one of them.
FBpurity or Fluff Busting Purity is another.
I've used both of them.
I recommend them equally.
You, whichever one you use, is fine.
I currently happen to be using FBpurity, but like I said, either one is fine.
One thing I will commiserate with you on, and that is mobile Facebook.
The extensions that I've just suggested
work on desktop, they work in your browser,
you install them in Chrome or Brave or Edge or whatever,
when you're running on your mobile device, you are running the Facebook app.
And the only customization that's available to you there is
the customization that Facebook decides to offer to you.
My experience with Facebook mobile.
It's awful.
It just never shows me what I really want to see shows me all sorts of stuff that I
don't care about and as a result, I really don't use it very much.
I will use it to look at specific things.
I'm not looking at my timeline,
but I'm going to say specific pages or I'm using it for Facebook Messenger.
But Facebook mobile is what it is and it isn't that good.
Now, one thing I do have to point out
here, every time the topic of change comes up is somebody sometimes multiple
somebodies will say they're just changing things to change things.
No, no, they're not they are not changing things for the sake of change.
They are not changing things to piss you off.
That's a horrible, horrible business model.
And that's exactly what these are.
These are businesses.
They have reasons.
They may not share those reasons.
You may not agree with those reasons, but there are reasons they are changing
because they see it as being a positive business decision to make those changes.
So they're not doing it to just piss us all off.
Even if the result is that we're all pissed off.
Eventually we end up either leaving the service, as some cases may have been,
or we just end up learning to live with it.
That's my ultimate recommendation.
Whenever a major application site or service changes in such a way that you're
unhappy about it, if you don't have an alternative that you
can switch to, which may very well be the case for a site like Facebook.
Learn to live with it. That's it.
Just get used to it,
getting angry, getting frustrated isn't going to change a thing.
It's not going to help you.
It's going to shorten your lifespan.
It's going to make you unpleasant to be around.
It's just not going to have any positive outcome.
The only thing that I recommend you
ultimately do when sites change is simply learn to live with the new interface.
Sorry if that's not what you want to hear,
but I honestly believe that it is the best solution in the long run.
For links, for updates, for what I'm sure will be many,
many comments on the article on which this video was based.
Visit Askleo.com/131952.
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is Askleo.com.Thanks for watching.