[ANSWERED] Permanently Set Facebook Feed To Show Most Recent Instead Of Top Stories

Quick Note: There is an additional tip for getting to the Most Recent view of your Facebook feed on the mobile apps at the bottom of this post, courtesy of a reader. Be sure to check out that update. I also added an update about reports that Facebook has been limiting the number of posts being displayed in the Most Recent view. 

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Sometimes the big social networks roll out features (or forget to roll them out) that work for the majority of the users, but just don’t make sense to some of us.

For example, I’m still trying to figure out why Instagram doesn’t have a good way to upload photos from the desktop or why Twitter makes it so hard to switch to desktop view on an iPad or tablet.

Another strange one is the fact that Facebook loves to show you the “Top Stories” that it thinks are important in your life and while that works for some, there are those of us who prefer to see our feeds in chronological order.

In the desktop view of Facebook, there is an option to change from Top Stories to Most Recent, but Facebook only maintains that setting for about 24 hours and then it automatically reverts back to Top Stories.

You can manually change your Facebook feed to display the most recent posts, but Facebook will change it back to Top Stories after about 24 hours.

Unfortunately, there isn’t any way to permanently change this setting in your profile, an option that I feel Facebook has mistakenly overlooked.

I’m sure that “Top Stories” probably garner Facebook more opportunities to learn about what is popular or what topics you are more likely to respond to…which can also lead to increased revenue for them.

It also gives them more control over your feed, as opposed to Most Recent, which simply dictates that the posts will be show in chronological order.

Unfortunately, a lot of us think of our Facebook feed as a chronological feed of events that are happening. We check-in multiple times each day, expecting that new things will have occurred since the last time we checked.

In other words, we expect our feed to be presented to us in chronological order.

The good news, is that there is an easy way to adjust Facebook so that it ALWAYS shows you the most recent.

The key is in the URL you use to access Facebook. Instead of using the standard http://Facebook.com URL to access the site, try clicking this link instead:

https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

With the ?sk parameter at the end of the URL, Facebook will now always display the most recent stories and will cause the banner to appear that indicates you’re viewing Most Recent.

To make this more “permanent”, just set a bookmark in your browser to that URL or add a shortcut on your desktop and then just click that link or bookmark when you want to access Facebook.

By doing that, Facebook will always start in a mode where the most recent stories are shown, instead of top stories.

Success! By using this URL, Facebook automatically switches your feed to Most Recent instead of Top Stories!

NOTE: I know, I know…it’s not the ideal solution that we want where Facebook adds a setting to our profiles and asks us whether we prefer to view our feed as Top Stories or Most Recent.

Unfortunately, we have little control over what features Facebook gives us as options. In the meantime, using a bookmark and accessing the desktop version of Facebook through that bookmark will always show you Most Recent if it has the ?sk=h_chr parameter assigned to the end of it.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t found a great way to switch the Android or iOS Facebook mobile apps over to Most Recent, but for those of you on Android, if you click the menu icon, you can always select “Most Recent” from your list of available feeds.

You can manually change the Android and iOS mobile apps to show the Most Recent feed, instead of the default Top Stories

In iOS on your iPhone or iPad, you can do the same thing by selecting the menu icon at the bottom of the app and choosing More > See More> Feeds > Most Recent.

I know…it’s a lot of steps, but it’s worth it if you really want to see your feeds in chronological order.

In the Facebook app for iOS, you can also view the most recent view of your Facebook feed

Hopefully that helps those of you who like to see the most recent posts from your friends and family!

If you another way or a better way to make this change permanent, definitely share them in the comments.

–Sean

Update 1 – Another workaround to getting to the most recent

One of my readers reached out through my contact form and sent an interesting note that there is a quicker way to get to the Most Recent view of your Facebook feed without having to navigate through the menus.

Hey Sean, Thanks for the tip on setting up a bookmark to show the most recent feed in the desktop view of Facebook. I thought I would return the favor with a tip that I use on the mobile app. To get to the Most Recent view on the mobile app, I just searched “Most Recent” in the search bar at the top of the app. If you do that, it auto-fills “most recent posts” and clicking that takes you to the Most Recent view of your timeline.

Here’s the best part, though. Once you do that, it saves “most recent posts” at the top of your recent searches. That means, you can simply click on the search bar and then click on the top item in your recent searches and it gets you there in two taps.

Hope that helps your readers, keep the tips coming.

–Wesley

…and sure enough, Wesley is correct. I opened my Facebook app on Android and typed “most recent” and the menu auto-populated the most recent posts option.

Once I tapped on that most recent posts, it took me right to the Most Recent view of my timeline.

When I tapped on the search bar again, the first entry in my recent searches was “most recent posts”, which is PERFECT.

I don’t actually do a lot of Facebook searches, so it’s nice to have it at the top of my recent searches. Even if it did drop down a couple spots, any time I tap on it, it would come right back to the top of my searches.

Thanks, Wesley! Hopefully this tip helps speed up the process of getting to the Most Recent view of your Facebook feed until Facebook actually listens to us and adds a setting to make it permanent.

Update 2 – Users Reporting Issues With The Most Recent View Of Facebook Feed Being Limited

A few folks in the comments and via email have been reporting that Facebook is tinkering around with the “Most Recent” view of the Facebook feed…and not in a good way. Specifically, Facebook has only been showing 5-10 articles and then forcing people to switch back over to the “Top Stories” view. 

A limited version of the Most Recent view would suck, because it’s our chronological view of posts. If they limit it to only 5-10 posts, then it makes it very difficult to go back and find a post that you saw and wanted to look at again. You can always search for the post, but the Facebook search feature is cumbersome.

The good news is they don’t seem to have rolled the changed out as a permanent “feature”. Last week, I experienced the limit on desktop but this week my desktop Most Review view continues to load article. I scrolled down until I had reviewed about 100 posts, so it doesn’t seem to be limited anymore. 

I never have experienced the scrolling limit on Most Recent in mobile. I’d be interested to hear if others have. 

Hopefully, it was just a glitch in a Facebook code update and they resolved it my removing the limit. If you’re still seeing it, let us know in a comment.

If you have a tip, be sure to share it and I’ll update the post!

Cheers!

–Sean

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