Hide Games From Your Facebook Timeline
One of Facebook’s most polarizing features is the wide variety of time-killing applications. If you’ve visited the site lately, you’ve doubtless seen a number of items in your News Feed updating you on your friends’ progress in Farmville, Mafia Wars, and many others.
Did you know it’s easy to remove these updates from your timeline, without disconnecting from your friends? Just find one of these posts and click the “Hide” link that appears on the right when you mouse over it.
Facebook will then ask you if you want to hide the person or the application. Click the name of the game.
Success! You’ll now no longer see updates on the games your friends are playing on Facebook, and you’ll see more links, photos and status updates instead.
Update: It gets even better. (Thanks to techpp.com) Not only can you keep games and other apps out of your Live Feed, you can also exclude them from your Notifications. When a notification appears in the lower right of your screen, mouse over the upper right corner of the item to see the “X” appear. Click that, and you’ll be invited to hide all notifications from that application.
Thank you for helping me hide Farmville!
You’re a lifesaver. And a friend saver. Really appreciate it. Just wondering why I couldn’t easily find this info on Facebook itself. Oh yeah, it’s because FB has to have one of the worst UIs around; yet we’re all stuck using it. Kind of like having to eat at McDonald’s when you’re hungry and nothing else is around.
Thanks for commenting, Martha and Heather. I’m glad you found this post helpful.
I was excited when I found out you could do this, because I really do enjoy reading status updates and seeing new pictures, but that was getting harder and harder to do.
I am a bit upset that this is something that was just realized. The feature has been around since the last major change in Summer of 2008.
Hi Tania-
I think the Hide button has been there for a long time, but the option to hide the application instead of your friend is more recent.
I could be wrong. In that case, I may be late to the party but I’m glad I found it late rather than not at all.
omg, i love you!
These games were so annoying, but since I could only block persons, I ignored the hide button. Now I don´t have to filter this crap out anymore and facebook became a much happier place.
Thanks so much for the information! Very grateful!
This doesn’t work for me
I don’t see a hide button at all, no matter where I mouseover.. I’m on ‘new’ facebook, perhaps that might be why? do you know how to hide it in the latest version?
ahh ok, I found it on my news feed. now how to hide it on people’s walls too…
Hi Ian-
If you visit other people’s walls, you’ll still see all of their updates, from whatever applications you’re using. The Hide button only works on your own News Feed (or Live Feed or whatever they’re calling it this week).
Still, that’s where it’s most vital. It’s OK by me if people want to clutter up their own timeline, but I was exasperated with the number of updates polluting my feed.
Thank you so much! I’m finally free of the damned thing!
didn’t work for me. the only “HIDE” that appeared was for the entire person, not just the app.
Thanks. Seems like it would be obvious but it wasn’t to me. I just don’t understand the attraction of this inane game – good riddance
THANK YOU…I can’t believe it you have made my FB so much better thank you thank you thank you.
Thanks! I’m a new and fairly infrequent user of FB, basically using it to keep in touch with the younger generation in my family
but that Farmville and ‘gift’ stuff was driving me crazy….
Thank you, Brent! My mobile FB page loads a lot faster now thanks to this handy tip.
Ed- Facebook had all kinds of troubles on the 19th, and even went down for a few hours. I would try again to see if it works for you.
Thanks everybody else for taking the time to comment. It’s nice knowing that you benefitted from this post.
Thank you, kind sir.
cheers, that was annoying that farmville
Thanks you sooooooooooooo much. This stuff was driving me out of my facebooking mind.
Thanks so much! I was to the point of defriending people!
THANK YOU. I thank you. My tweetdeck thanks you. My clients all thank you. My friends all thank you. Except the ones who play Farmville. @Gwen, Ditto.
Yes but the hide button does not appear on my newsfeed
Thank you. You tutorial was a God send!!!
OH MY GOD! Thank you for this! I’ve been on the brink of losing it when my friends started spamming my news feed with Mafia Wars and Farmville stuff.
PHEW!! Such GREAT help. Thanks.
Awesome!!!!!!!!!!
This is a PERFECT example of Facebook’s interface being pure garbage.
I would *never* click a “Hide” button next to one of my best friend’s updates, but there’s NO WAY to know that there are options to hide updates from that app, as opposed to hiding the person.
Facebook can’t die soon enough.
Salsa- I can’t argue with you there. Navigation took a step forward with the recent redesign. The links in the left column are a lot more useful, for example. But in general, the UI is sadly lacking.
Thaaaaank Yoooouuuuuuuuuuuu so much!!!
Just hid Farmville!! YIPPEE!!
If you’re a Google Chrome/Chromium user, you can use an extension I’ve written. You can find it at the Google extension gallery. This will allow you to block _all_ postings from applications and also comes with a whitelist. Try it out, it’s working very well.
I want to weep with joy. If only I had nothing better to do than find a baby calf in farmville… Forever in your debt. Seriously.
I think I have hidden notifications for all games known to man from appearing in my news feed…however, the notifications are still showing up on my mobile app news feed, is there some other way to hide them from my mobile news feed? It’s such a drag :/ any help would be very much appreciated!
I just figured out the answer to my question…change to status updates…thanks anyways!
Michelle, is that a Blackberry app? I’ve noticed that applications I hide on the web are hidden when I use the iPhone app. It’s odd that Facebook wouldn’t keep that behavior uniform across all mobile apps.
You are officially my favorite person in the world at this very moment. THANK YOU!!
D
Is it also possible to exclude these shitty game nottifications from my facebook app on my blackberry? I’ve tried and tried but It doesn’t seem to work. Anyone?
Tessa-
I don’t have specific experience with the Blackberry, but here’s what I found to be true on the iPhone app. You can’t hide items from the phone, but items you hide from your computer’s browser are hidden the next time you use the mobile app.
Also, the Live Feed has a pulldown menu where you can pick what updates you want to see. As Michelle above discovered, you can pick “Status Updates” to see only your friends’ posts (but that excludes links and photos). Even better, create a group, to narrow your feed to all posts by specific friends. For a step-by-step on creating groups, check this more recent post: http://bit.ly/avsO0A
I hope that helps. Good luck!
Thank you!
Thank you – Thank you – Thank you
Kia ora!
I tried to ignore Farmville, but it finally got the better of me. Finding your post was the culmination of 30 minutes searching… Well worth it though. Aagh, the satisfaction!
Thank you for your insight. May Farmville rot in hell. I am so glad to be rid of that lame ass crap. Again, thank you.
Thank you thank you thank you for helping me hide all the annoying mafia wars, farmville etc. updates that I don’t play and don’t really give a rat’s ass about!