How to Delete Facebook Notifications
Facebook has a reputation for spamming its users. The smartphone app bombards you with notifications. Every day, dozens of emails arrive. And you can expect to see a lot of new notifications every time you log into the web app.
Fortunately, this does not have to be the case. Here’s what you need to know if you want to delete Facebook notifications, clear Facebook notifications, or turn off Facebook notifications completely.
How to Delete Facebook Notifications
Let’s start with the most important question: How do you delete Facebook notifications?
If you want to remove a Facebook notification from the web app, follow the steps below:
- Navigate to Facebook.com and log into your account.
- Click on the Notifications bell in the upper right-hand corner.
- Find the notification that you want to hide.
- Click on the three horizontal dots alongside the notification you want to delete.
- Select Remove this notification.
The procedure for removing Facebook notifications from the smartphone app is similar. Simply launch the app and select the Notifications tab. When you’ve located the alert you want to remove, tap the three dots and select Remove this notification.
How to Clear All Facebook Notifications
When you log into Facebook and see a stack of unread notifications, you’ll want to get rid of them as soon as possible. When you click on the bell icon, the red dot representing unread notifications disappears.
However, you have not fully resolved the issue. If you do not clear the notifications, they will reappear as soon as a new alert arrives. To permanently delete Facebook notifications, mark them all as read.
Surprisingly, there is no way to delete unread notifications from the smartphone app without clicking on each one individually. Instead, you must carry out the procedure through the web app.
Follow the steps below to mark all of your Facebook notifications as read:
- Head to Facebook.com and log into your account.
- Click on the Notifications icon in the upper right-hand corner.
- Click on the three horizontal dots.
- Select Mark all as read.
How to Turn Off Facebook Notifications
Hopefully, the previous two sections have assisted you in gaining control of your existing Facebook notifications. However, this is only half the battle. You must take care not to be bothered by all of that notification spam in the future, or you will quickly find yourself in the same situation.
There are two approaches to the problem. You can either turn off notifications for specific types of alerts as they arrive, or you can use Facebook’s Settings menu to take a more comprehensive approach.
How to Turn Off Facebook Notifications as They Arrive
To turn off Facebook notifications as they arrive, follow the same steps as to delete Facebook notifications.
To learn about the process on the web app, follow the steps below:
- Type Facebook.com into your browser and log into your account.
- Click on the Notifications icon in the upper right-hand corner.
- Find a notification that you want to turn off.
- Click on the three dots.
- Select Turn off notifications of this type (the exact wording may change depending on the type of notification).
(Note: When you disable notifications on a page, you will also see the option to Turn off all notifications from this page.)
Smartphone users can see the same options by opening the app, going to the Notifications tab, and clicking the three dots next to the notification in question.
How to Turn Off Facebook Notifications by Category
You can disable notifications for each type of alert by going to the Facebook Settings menu (e.g. birthdays, people you may know, events, pages you follow, etc).
You can also use the menu to re-enable a notification that you had disabled previously using the first method we discussed.
To disable Facebook notifications by category, follow these simple steps:
- Go to Facebook.com and log into your account.
- Click on the down arrow in the top right-hand corner.
- Choose Settings and Privacy > Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the panel on the left-hand side of the page, click on Notifications.
You should now see a list of all the notification categories. To disable a specific type of notification, expand the section and make the desired changes. Some notification categories can be turned off with a simple toggle; others (such as Groups) give you control over email and SMS notifications, as well as granular control over which groups you want to disable.
It’s also worth scrolling all the way to the bottom of the list to the section on how you receive notifications. It allows you to customize which browser and email notifications you receive. If you don’t want to bother customizing everything, you can choose to receive Facebook’s suggested notifications—but you’ll still get a lot of spam.