How to

How to hide Facebook Messenger notification previews from iPhone Lock Screen for more privacy

Two iPhone mockups with one showing Messenger notification preview and one hiding it

Facebook Messenger is among the most popular third-party cross-platform messaging services. And almost everybody with a Facebook account uses it, whether they want to admit it or not. Like Messages and Mail, you can hide Facebook Messenger notification previews on your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen to increase your privacy. In this quick tutorial, we show you how to do that.

How to download Facebook photos and videos

If you've been on Facebook for a few years now, chances are you've shared a bunch of photos and videos with your friends and family thus far, many of which might no longer be stored on your iOS device or Mac.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't make things any easier by not providing a straightforward way to download the photos and videos users have uploaded to the service.

But worry not, our loyal fans, the iDownloadBlog tutorial series comes to the rescue. In this detailed tutorial, you will learn about five different techniques that will help you download Facebook photos and videos onto your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac without too much hassle.

How to download the entire archive of your Facebook account

How to download your Facebook data

If you're considering closing your Facebook account and leaving the service, you should store copies of the photos, videos, status updates, wall posts, and other content you've published on Facebook thus far locally on your computer. Thankfully, this can be easily done by downloading your entire Facebook data as a ZIP file.

This gives you a permanent copy of a lot of the same information available to you in your Facebook account. This includes stuff like your Timeline info, posts you have shared, messages, photos, and more, as well as data you did not create yourself, such as the ads you have clicked on, logged IP addresses, and whatnot.

This step-by-step tutorial will guide you through the process of downloading an archive of your Facebook information to a computer and exploring its contents.

How to make a profile video in Facebook’s iOS app

Facebook recently began allowing users to set a short video as their profile picture on the service. Users can now take or upload a video of up to seven seconds to use as their profile video. These profile videos appear at the top of your profile, just like static profile pictures, but you can currently add a profile video only from the iPhone.

If you feel your Facebook profile is too static, here's how to spice it up with a profile video in Facebook's iOS app.

How to disable Location History on Facebook to extend iPhone battery life

Yesterday, Facebook issued an update to its main iOS client to help extend your iPhone's battery life by preventing it from playing audio silently in the background.

File the move under the 'too little, too late' drawer: if history is anything to go by, waiting for Facebook engineers to deliver a fully battery-friendly iOS app might be a fool's errand.

The biggest contributor to Facebook's infamous battery drain has got to be the app's continuous monitoring of your location, which continues after leaving the app. In this tutorial, we'll teach you how to prevent this by disabling a feature called Location History, thereby helping reclaim some of the juice lost to the battery-hogging app.

How to upload HD photos and videos on Facebook

One of the more annoying things about Facebook has got to be the diminished quality of photos and videos you upload to the service, be it via iOS's Facebook integration integration or through the official mobile app for the iPhone and iPad, a free download in the App Store.

For whatever reason, Facebook's mobile app defaults to low-resolution photo and video uploads, likely in an effort to minimize bandwidth usage in this digital age of capped cellular data.

Fortunately, there is an easy yet not immediately obvious way to configure Facebook for iPhone and iPad to record and upload videos and photos in glorious high-definition.

How to use Facebook profile pictures for your iOS contacts

I have dozens of contacts in my iPhone that don’t have a picture attached to them. Sometimes, I’ll get a band’s information at a show and will even forget who they were months later. Pictures always help in situations like these. I’m better with faces than I am with names.

For a while now, Apple has included the ability to merge your friends’ Facebook information, including updated profile pictures, to your contacts in iOS. It only takes a few seconds and we’ve got a short tutorial for you below.

How to send Facebook messages without using Messenger app

Last month, Facebook announced that it was disabling the messaging service in its official Facebook app for iOS requiring users to switch to its Facebook Messenger app in order to continue to send and receive messages from friends. This move by the company to force users to use its standalone messenger app was disliked by many.

Yet, if you wish to get rid of this restriction and continue chatting with your friends without using the Facebook Messenger app, you can follow either of the methods outlined below. In this post, we will share two methods that will allow you to send messages in Facebook without using the standalone Messenger app.

How to view ‘Most Recent’ feed in Facebook 10.0 for iOS

Facebook for iOS was recently updated to version 10.0 with several improvements, including a faster news feed and the ability to draft posts without an internet connection. The option to switch the news feed to "most recent" view, which displays the latest posts in reverse chronological order, was also hidden within the settings of the social networking app. By default, the app now displays posts based on a "most popular" setup. If that isn't your preference, there is no need to be worried. Here is an extremely simple tip for how to switch back to the "most recent" feed on Facebook… 

How to read iDownloadBlog from Facebook’s new Paper app

I'm usually not much of a Facebook user but I have to admit I have been spending more time on the social network in the last two days than I have in the whole last month. Why is that? It's simply due to their new app named Paper, which lets you browse Facebook in a beautiful and intuitive way. If you haven't tried it yet, I really encourage you to have a look at it. It might change the way you see Facebook, at least until they slap a bunch of ads on it.

Although there is no way to customize the sections of Paper with the content of your choice besides the default ones, I want to show you how you can browse through iDB's latest post using Paper...