Facebook is testing a new feature to disable the receipt of notifications within the app: here's how it works
Facebook is always ready to introduce novelties and updates within its platform. After offering Instagram-style Stories, Live and Facebook Movies, it's now time to put its hands on one of the social network's most important features: notifications.
These alerts are shown both in the web version and in the app. Unfortunately, many of them are often unnecessary and stressful; for example, those that warn you about new posts in groups or changes to an event and so on. Facebook has therefore decided to lighten its intrusiveness by giving users the possibility to deactivate the red notifications considered unnecessary. This would be a nice innovation that would give more freedom to users. Each person could really decide which alerts to receive and which to ignore.
Facebook retires useless notifications
The indiscretion came from the developer Jane Manchung Wong who found the novelty within the code of the Android app. Facebook a few days later confirmed everything to TechCrunch, saying that this is a new feature being tested on both Android and iOS systems. The spokesperson said that a sort of on/off switch has been thought for each section of the social network: groups, marketplace, profile and menu. The goal is to make deactivating notifications easy and intuitive.
How will Facebook's red notifications be eliminated?
Some screenshots showing the feature being tested have been leaked. According to the screenshots, to disable notifications you will need to access the Settings where a special section dedicated to notifications will be introduced that will allow you to disable the alerts related to different sections. You'll be able to disable all of them or just some of them: they are completely independent from each other.
Will the deactivation of notifications really work?
Aside the curiosity to test it, there are also some doubts related to the new feature. First of all, it is not yet known if it will be possible to delete all - but really all - red Facebook notifications, or only those related to the particular sections shown so far. For example, it might be impossible to disable alerts on new likes and comments on personal profiles. Moreover, it is not clear whether the novelty affects only the application or also the web version of the social network. For the moment, there is still no certainty, we will have to wait for the official release of the update to see if and how much it will improve the user experience.