Facebook launches snooze button so you can hide annoying friends for 30 days

Everyone has a Facebook friend they find annoying, whether because they post terrible dad jokes, spout political nonsense, or simply have dissimilar views and interests. While there are already ways to hide those people from your timeline without unfriending them, Facebook is now rolling out a new feature that lets you temporarily unfollow any of your buddies for 30 days.

The new snooze feature also works with Pages and Groups, so if you’re sick of a particular publication’s posts about a sporting event you have no interest in, you can cut off contact for a month.

 

Facebook has actually been testing the snooze option for a few months, though the company seems to have made some tweaks to the feature since it was first debuted. For instance, in its original guise, the snooze feature was bundled in alongside the existing unfollow feature, meaning you had to tap the “unfollow or snooze” option from the dropdown box and then select whether you wanted to permanently unfollow (but not unfriend) the party, or just temporarily mute their messages.

Additionally, it seems that Facebook was originally going to allow users to snooze people, Pages, or Groups for a day, a week, or a month. Now, it’s a simple one-tap decision — do you want to mute your pal Peter for 30 days… or not?

“We’ve heard from people that they want more options to determine what they see in News Feed and when they see it,” noted Facebook product manager Shruthi Muraleedharan, in a blog post. “With Snooze, you don’t have to unfollow or unfriend permanently, rather just stop seeing someone’s posts for a short period of time. The people, Pages, and groups you snooze will not be notified. You will be notified before the Snooze period is about to end, and the setting can also be reversed at any time.”