Facebook launches silent mode to help you disconnect

Facebook has unveiled a new feature to help people log out of the social network. This silent mode is available on iOS and will arrive in May on Android.

In this period of confinement and health crisis, it can be tempting to spend hours browsing social networks to find out what our loved ones are saying. Sometimes, however, publications can be anxiety-provoking, such as spending hours on continuous news channels. Aware of this problem, Facebook announced this Thursday update of its social network.

“We have added a silent mode, which disables most push notifications, and if you try to open Facebook with this mode, we will notify you that you have chosen to limit your time in the application”, indicates Facebook in a press release published this Thursday.

The idea is very similar to what Android and iOS already offer their digital wellness modes. We can thus, within the Facebook application, choose to switch to silent mode until a certain time. During this period, we will no longer receive notifications and, when we want to open the application, it will remind us – without blocking access – that silent mode is still active for a given period.

Availability in May on Android

For the time being, the functionality is only deployed on the iPhone. It will arrive on Android in May as the VentureBeat site specifies. The functionality can be activated directly from the “Time spent on Facebook” option in the application options. In addition to the possibility of seeing the time spent on the application during the week, the function now makes it possible to activate a silent mode scheduled by day and by time. When you want to go to the application despite the activation of silent mode, you can choose to return to the classic mode or to use the social network for a maximum of 15 minutes.

These functions are largely reminiscent of what Android and iOS already offer natively, but with more parameters linked directly to the social network. In addition, these are not the only new features unveiled by Facebook to allow users to better control their use of the application:

“We have also added shortcuts to the notification settings and preferences of the news feed, so you can get the most out of Facebook by controlling the type of posts you see in your feed and the updates you receive. ”