6 (More) Interesting Facebook Tricks You Might Not Know

1. View non-public profile photos in full size

You may have run into the issue of trying to find someone using Graph Search, only to discover you can’t quite make out their identity via their teeny-tiny profile picture. If said user has set their photo to private (in other words, if they’ve set it to be visible only ‘to me’), you won’t be able to see the full-sized photo.

The Trick

With this trick, you will be able to view any profile picture as full-sized, regardless of whether or not it’s marked as private.

Attention stalkers: Please disregard everything you’re about to read.

How to do it

1. Go to the profile picture you’d like to see and open it in a new tab or window (on Mac, Ctrl-Click and then ‘Open Image in New Tab’, on PC, right click and then ‘Open Image in New Tab’).

2. Go to new tab or window, to the address bar. You should see a portion of the url that looks something like this:

3. Remove the ‘s160x160’, and hit enter.

Voila! You should see the full sized image in your browser. Note that if the original picture was small, this trick won’t do you much good!

2. Download an entire Facebook photo album

Your brother has just uploaded 500 adorable pictures of his new baby daughter, and you’d like to save them to your computer. How do you do it? One picture at a time! Currently, this is the only way Facebook gives us to download photos.

The Trick

PhotoLive to the rescue! This handy little extension allows you to quickly and easily download entire photo albums from Facebook to your desktop.

How to do it

1. Go to Photo Live and download the extension (please note, while it’s completely free, it does require registration including credit card information, although you will not be charged).
2. Once it’s installed, you will see a button at the top of your Facebook page whenever you view a photo album. Clicking on it will download the album as a zip file to your computer.

It’s as simple as that!

3. Mute a conversation

If you’ve ever been roped into a group conversation on Facebook, you’ll appreciate this one. By default, Facebook will send you notifications on your phone and Facebook page whenever a new response is posted.

Particularly if you’re being messaged as part of a large group, the notifications can get pretty annoying.

The Trick

An easy way to ‘opt out’ of ongoing conversations is to simply ‘mute’ them. This will continue to allow you access to the conversation, however you won’t receive notifications of new comments.

How to do it

1. Go into the offending message, and click on the Actions tab at the top right corner of the screen.
2. Click on Mute Conversation, and all notifications will cease.

If you’re part of a group conversation, you can also choose to leave the conversation, however this would mean you lose access to future replies. By muting the conversation, you can continue to read new replies at your leisure.

4. Post a blank status update

Granted, I’m not sure why you’d want to do this. But should the need ever arise to post a completely blank update, you’ll know who to thank!

The Trick

Facebook doesn’t allow you to post a blank update, so if you attempt to publish a blank post, you’ll see this:

Of course, you could just type in a period or underscore and have an almost blank post, but’s what’s the fun in that? If you’re going to go to the trouble of posting a blank update, you at least want your friends to wonder, ‘How did he do that?’

How to do it

To post a blank status update, simply type the following into your update box:

@[0:0: ]

And if you want to have several blank lines – you guessed it – just copy and paste the code onto multiple lines.

It appears that for some users, a question mark in a black diamond appears rather than a completely blank update. I’m not sure why this works differently for different users, but it may simply be a browser-related issue.

5. Disable Read Receipt

Everyone has a friend or client who messages them just a little too much on Facebook. And by default, as soon as you’ve read their message, they will see a note that the message has been read. This puts the pressure on you to respond to the message quickly, or risk appearing rude.

The Trick

While Facebook doesn’t allow you to turn off read receipts, there are third party apps that allow you to set up this feature, allowing you to go undetected on Facebook messages or chats.

The Facebook Unseen add-on for Chrome ensures no one can see whether or not you’ve read their messages, giving you an added layer of privacy and flexibility.

How to do it

1)      Download Facebook Unseen

2)      Once it’s installed, you should see the Facebook Unseen icon in your brower:

3)      Click on the icon to be sure it’s enabled. When it’s working, you should see the following message:

6. Find out who’s un-friended you

I urge you only to use this one if you have a very solid self-esteem. While Facebook doesn’t give you a way to see who has un-friended you, there are third party apps that will tell you exactly who has ditched you.

The Trick

By using Who deleted me you can find out exactly who has un-friended you, and you will even receive ongoing notifications when anything changes in terms of your Facebook friendships.

How to do it

1. Go to Who deleted me and login using Facebook.

2. Allow the software access to your Facebook information.
3. Choose how you’d like to view your data: by the day, week or month.

Note that it may take a while for accurate stats to show up. When I signed up, I got the following message:

“Have you just registered? Please note that we might not have sufficient data for you yet which explains the empty fields above. Once something changes we’ll have that on record here.”

And there you have it. Six tricks that will help you have a little more privacy and fun on Facebook. What other tips or hacks do you love? Share in the comments below!