Facebook has announced a new feature, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, that allows users to view posts made by their friends and groups in chronological order.
When users open Facebook after receiving the update, they’ll be greeted with the Home feed. This is a tab that shows personalized content based on Facebook’s machine learning-powered recommendations. Then, by clicking on the Feeds tab, you’ll find recent posts from your friends, groups, and pages.
According to Meta, the update will be distributed globally in the coming week.
Facebook Home and Feeds Tabs
Meta
In a Thursday post on his Facebook page, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said one of the most requested features for Facebook has been a tool that ensures people don’t miss their friends’ posts. “The app will still open to a personalized feed on the Home tab, where our discovery engine will recommend the content we think you’ll care most about,” he wrote. “But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience further.”
Here’s how to use Facebook’s Home and Feeds tabs.
How to use Facebook’s Home tab
Similar to how Facebook’s home page was set up prior to the update, the Home tab will be where users see “Suggested for you” content in addition to a mixture of posts from friends they’ve added, groups they’ve joined, and pages they’ve liked.
The Home tab will function mainly as a place where Facebook pushes new content and creators to users through algorithmic recommendations, similar to TikTok’s “For You” page. From Home, users will also be able to create short-form Reels videos to and click through other people’s Reels and Stories.
Basically, if you’re using the Home tab, you should be in the mood to see content that Facebook’s AI thinks you will like, regardless of where it comes from.
How to use Facebook’s Feeds tab
On the Feeds tab—located in the shortcut bar at the bottom of the Facebook app on iOS and at the top of the app on Android—users won’t see any suggested content. Instead, they’ll be able to see posts, videos, and photos from people and groups they know, in chronological order.
The Feeds tab can be seen as a sort of return to Facebook. Meta stated on Thursday however that the Feeds tab will continue to display ads.
Facebook’s Feeds tab
Meta
After clicking on Feeds, users will have the option of toggling between a new set of tabs at the top of the app that will filter the chronological posts they’re seeing by friends, pages, groups, or all three categories combined. Users can customize a favorite tab in Feeds so that they only see posts from the friends and pages or groups they are most interested in. You can have up to 30 favorite pages.
Based on which features are being used most, the tabs within the shortcut bar (Watch, Marketplace and Groups) will change. Users have the option to pin a tab from the shortcut bar so that it remains there forever. All they have to do is select Menu on the shortcut bar, tap Settings & privacy, Settings, Shortcuts, and Shortcut bar, open the dropdown menu next to the shortcut they want to pin, and hit Pin.
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