With people spending more time on social media these days following lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has launched a new feature to help users manage the time they spend on the platform.
With its new ‘Quiet Mode’ option, Facebook will let users mute its app’s push notification for a specified period.
The company announced the new feature on its COVID-19 Newsroom, saying it’s a way for users to set boundaries on how they spend their time online. This is in furtherance of Facebook’s digital well being features on its platform.
“As we all adjust to new routines and staying home, setting boundaries for how you spend your time online can be helpful. Whether it’s to help you focus on your family and friends, sleep without distraction or manage how you spend your time at home, we have tools that can help you find the right balance for how you use Facebook.”
Facebook
The new tool can be scheduled to run during a specified period or turned on and off manually by users. So if you have something to work on for like 2 hours, you could set the Quiet Mode to run for that period during which you will not receive push notifications or those red numbers on the Facebook app. This way the temptation to open the app at every buzz is reduced.
Also, during the set period, if you try to open the app, you will be reminded of your Quiet Mode decision, of which you can decide to continue to the app or hold on to your decision.
The controls for the new Quiet Mode can be found in a new section on Facebook where you can have an overview of the time you spend on the platform, a link to your activity log, and News Feed Preferences – in one place.
Although the ‘time-overview’ feature was initially rolled out in 2018, it has been revamped to show more insights like daytime-nighttime comparisons, weekly comparisons and the number of times the app was opened in a day.
Although Android and iOS users can actually turn off app notifications for specific apps from settings, the new Quiet Mode feature will help them actually control it better. This way it can be automated without having to waddle through the phone’s settings every now and then.
The feature will be rolled out globally now for iOS users, with a later launch date set for Android users.
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