A person who is a die-hard fan of Game of Thrones hears that the
first episode of the season is out and it might be a few hours before he
can watch it. So, probably he would lock himself in a room, throw away
the key and cut every communication through social media and WhatsApp
and all that just to save himself from the spoilers. Not just Game of
Thrones, spoilers can ruin almost any movie and TV show for you that you
have been waiting for months. “Did you hear about Jon Snow’s ****?” | Shutterstock
Most of these spoilers are from popular social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter.
Some of your friends consider it their birth right to spoil the movies
just for fun but they really don’t understand that how important it can
be for an individual who has waited for quite a few months just to enjoy
the show like everyone else.
So today, I will share with you a few tricks that you can use to
fight such spoilers on Facebook and Twitter and make sure you enjoy the
show or a movie without any spoilers.
Blocking Spoilers on Facebook
We will be using a tool called F.B. Purity
which is a browser extension available for most of the modern day
browsers. The extension works out of the box to fight irrelevant content
on your Facebook timeline and hides them to show only the ones which
matter to you. Most of these contents that F.B. Purity hides from newsfeed are game requests, application spam, ads and sponsored stories.
When you install the extension and load Facebook, you will see the
F.B. Purity link under the Status Update box which will tell the number
of updates that the extension has hidden from you. If you click on the
F.B. Purity link, it will open up the F.B. Purity Options.
Under the Newsfeed Filters section, you will see a
lot of options to filter the news feeds that you get on your FB
timeline. Under the option where you see Text Filter, enter the
words or phrases (on separate lines) that you wish to filter from your
news feed. For example, for Game of Thrones, it should be GoT, Game of
Thrones, Jon Snow and whatever you think might be used by your friends
in their status updates.
That’s all, once you are done, you can click on Save and Close to save the settings. You are now safe from spoilers as far as browsing Facebook on your browser is concerned.
Blocking Spoilers on Twitter
There are extensions like Open Tweet Filter and Larry filter for Twitter
available for Chrome and Firefox respectively using which you can block
tweets containing specific keywords while you are browsing the official
website. You just need to install these extensions and enter the
keywords, hashtags and even the users you wish to block on your Twitter
timeline.
It’s as simple as that. These extensions will protect you to a great
extent when it comes to spoilers and other useless updates you get on
your Facebook and Twitter timeline.
What About Smartphones?
For Facebook, there is no app or settings that I am aware of that can
block keyword based updates on the official app. You can anyways
uninstall the app and do your phone a favor with huge battery drain and unnecessary background app activity.
For Twitter, there are various third-party apps available for
Windows, Android, and iOS using which you can blacklist certain keywords
on your timeline. We have already covered some of the top tools with
this feature in one of our previous articles and you can have a look at.
Conclusion
So that was how you can protect yourself from spoilers on Facebook
and Twitter. If you would like to share any additional tips for our
readers that can help in fighting spoilers, please reach out to us
through comments or our forum.
Especially if it’s about filtering updates on Facebook for smartphones, I would love to hear.
Facebook
today is now a giant in the social media arena. Facebook’s Messenger is
also a giant but in a different way. It started off as an extension to
Facebook’s website but now it is its own entity and used by many for
messaging on their mobile phones.
FB Messenger Evolves | Denys Prykhodov / Shutterstock
Messenger has grown to a point now where it has around 900 million
users. Over the years, several great features have been added. It may
even be the case that there are many features that you are not aware of.
For that reason, we will be exploring the various features which
Messenger has to offer.
What Messenger Has to Offer
Did you know that Messenger has its own web client? Point your browser to messenger.com to try it out.
In addition to sending text-based messages, you can also make video
and voice calls with Messenger. Voice calling is also available within
group chats.
Users also have the ability to share their location on mobile
devices. Simply tap on the 3 dots in the vicinity of the text input area
and you will be able to selectLocationfrom there. This is useful for giving directions.
Clicking on the information icon within a chat offers users a variety
of options. The two which stand out the most, however, are the ability
to add nicknames as well as the ability to change the color of a
contact’s chat window.
On Android devices, users have the ability to add their favorite contacts as shortcuts on their home screens.
Simply press and hold on a contact and a menu will pop up presenting
several options including the ability to create a shortcut.
You can also edit a photo
from directly within the chat interface which can come in handy. You
will need to select the photo you wish to use and then hit the edit
button.
You also get the ability to draw and add text to your photos.
It is also possible to integrate Messenger with several third party apps.
Press the 3 dots in the vicinity of the text input area and you will be
able to choose from a variety of apps whose functionality can be
blended with that of Messenger.
Note: You will need to install the apps separately in order for this feature to work.
Like I mentioned before, Messenger is now a separate entity from the
Facebook website. In line with this, a Facebook account is no longer
required in order for people to use the app. If you are on a mobile
phone, you can sign up using your phone number.
Finally, Messenger can do a whole bunch of random stuff! You can play
basketball for instance by sending a basketball emoticon in chat and
then tapping on it.
You can even play chess! To begin playing a game, send @fbchess
within a chat. You will only be able to use the pieces using text input,
however.
As if that wasn’t enough sending @dailycute within a chat, provides
the receiving person with a surprise in the form of a random cute
animal!
Conclusion
Messenger has really evolved and offers layers of functionality.
There are so many things that it can do in addition to its text, voice
and video chat functionalities. You will notice the different sizes and
slightly different appearances of some of the screenshots.
This is another plus for messenger. I took some of them using my
Android device and some of them with my iPad in order to illustrate that
the functionality that Messenger offers is generally uniform across
platforms.
There are clearly many cool things which you can do with Messenger
these days. So what are you waiting for? Go try them out and let us know
what you think.
When it comes to online media sharing,
photos and videos are the only two things that come to our mind. While
Photos are evergreen, videos carry much more emotions with you being
able to see all the moments. However, we are not always comfortable with
videos and mainly because of the large file size and believe it or not,
also because of the background sound that comes with these videos.
Then there are GIF files which carry the best of both the worlds.
They are fairly small in size and thus are ideal for online sharing and
at the same time, they are motion pictures and looks more of less like a
video with lesser details. Now, as I mentioned, they are a sequence of
images which moves so fast that they look like a motion picture and at
the moment, the internet is full of it. There are many websites that
host public GIF images that you can use and share online. We have also
shared quite a few ways on how you can make GIF files from photos and videos and you can have a look at the previous articles for some brush-up.
This article, however, is to guide you on how you can use these GIFs
on social media like Facebook, Twitter or a personal blog. To get
started, you will either have to find a GIF that you would like to share
on Giphy or Imgur, the largest online database of GIFs. Do explore them
before you begin and if you have created a personal GIF that you would
like to share, I would recommend you to upload the GIF files to one of
the two mentioned services to ease things.
How to Share GIFs on Facebook
Now to share a GIF on Facebook, it’s utterly important to first
upload it online and Imgur or Giphy are the two best sources to do that.
If you don’t have a personally created GIF, you can use the online
library and select a GIF to share. In the article, I will take Giphy as
an example, but the process would be same across other image hosting
services.
Basically, for Facebook, we need the direct URL of the GIF image file with ends with the extension .gif. To do that, open the advanced tab on Giphy and copy the URL against the option GIF Download. To make sure it’s the right link for Facebook, just make sure it ends with .gif.
Now all you need to do is, copy the link and paste it in the Facebook
Status Update box. Facebook will automatically fetch the GIF file and
once it’s done, you can delete the link pasted in the box. Additionally,
you can write additional text and finally click on the publish button.
That’s all, your GIF will be shared with friends.
How to Share GIF on Twitter
Now moving on to Twitter. Unlike Facebook, Twitter has an integrated
button search and embed GIF directly using Giphy. If you have already
searched for a GIF on Giphy, you can copy the link from the Twitter
section and paste it in the search box. Finally, when your GIF shows up,
you can click on the Tweet button.
Twitter gives the option to upload GIF files as an image directly and
if you have a personal GIF, you can upload it directly to Twitter
rather than first uploading it to Giphy. But if you choose to use the
GIF more than once on social media and blogs, it would be best to upload
it on Giphy.
Sharing on Blogs
If you have shared any YouTube video on your blog, you can relate it
to sharing GIFs as it’s almost the same. You will have to get hold of
the iframe embed code and then paste it to the blog in HTML
format. The code can be found under the sharing option and it’s the
first sharing option on both, Imgur and Giphy. Just make sure you paste
the HTML code in HTML format and not the right text format.
Apart from that, if you have unlimited online web space, you can
upload the Gif files directly to your server and insert then just like
any other image files.
Conclusion
So that was how you can share GIFs on Facebook, Twitter and personal
blog Thanks to Google Plus, other social networking services saw
potential in GIF image sharing and included the feature in due course of
time. Now all I am looking forward to is the feature to be included on
WhatsApp and once it does, I will make sure I update it on the post.
Watching videos on the smartphones now comes second to listening to
music as a source of entertainment while on the move. There are many
services to choose from when it comes to music streaming, but YouTube and Facebook are two of the top stakeholders when it comes to video streaming on smartphones.
As this streaming are done on the move, they require a cellular data
connection and they don’t come cheap. To address the issue, YouTube has
already rolled out the feature of offline playback where the user can
download on Wi-Fi to view it offline. This feature is very helpful as it
helps to cut down on data usage and thus turns out to be cheap.
Facebook, however, has not rolled out this feature for the users. The
videos are just saved as bookmarks and require active data connection
when played at a later stage. So to save on the cost of entertainment,
today we will see a trick using which you can download Facebook Videos
on your Android and watch when while you are offline.
Downloading Facebook Videos on Android
We would be using an app called MyVideoDownloader for Facebook
available from the Play Store for the trick. While there are many apps
available for the task, this one comes with the least amount of ads
which also keeps frustration at bay.
When you install and launch the app for the first time, you will be
asked to log in using your Facebook account. Having done that, the app
will show you your wall feed and the sidebar will help you navigate to
specific sections. From here you can navigate to specific pages and
groups to browse videos.
Now all you need to do is tap on the video you wish to download and
you will get the option to download it to your device. Just as you tap
on the option, the Android downloader will catch the file and ask you to
save it on your SD card.
Under the Settings column, you will get the option to
download videos in HD (High Definition). This will download the best
quality available for each video. Under My Videos section, you can
easily find the videos you have liked and saved in the past. The
download locations and other nifty stuff can be configured in the app
settings.
That’s about it. You can now watch these downloaded videos on any
video player you have installed on your device. If you are not using MX Player to watch videos on your Android, I would recommend you try it once.
Note: These apps make it easy to
download videos, but speaking from my personal experience, they are
removed from the Play Store for various reasons or the developers pull
them back. If, by chance, you are not able to download the app from the
Play Store, you can download and sideload the APK using this link.
Conclusion
The app works flawlessly and the mirror link will make sure it helps
our readers for a long time. But still, if you find that the trick no
longer works, please reach out to us in our forum and we will do our
best to come up with a new trick.
Messaging is an important part of our lives and each platform that is offering IM services is trying to one-up the other. We’ve already compared how Facebook’s Messenger stacks up against Hangouts in their browser avatars, but here are a few simple tricks to keep track of all the photos you’ve shared on Facebook Messenger with your friends, on any kind of device.
1. The Web
To get to shared photos via the web, tap the messages icon on the top panel right next to the notifications icon. Then click on See All so that you can enter the correct view to do what we need to do. If you instead directly open the chat window of your friend, then you will never find the right option.
So, once you’re in the right section, click on the contact whose shared images you want to see. Then click on Actions and then on View photos in thread. This will give you access to all the pictures you had shared with that person.
2. iPhone and iPads
On iOS, things are pretty easy. Go to the Messenger app and click on the particular person’s chat window. You then have to click on their name, which will give you the contact info including a section that says Shared Photos.
Easy, right?
3. Android Devices
On Android devices, running the updated app, things are a little different. You need to again open the Facebook Messenger app and tap on your contact’s chat and then hunt the circled i icon on the top-right icon. This information window gives you all the data you need right there, but no separate section for shared photos.
You will, in fact, see all the shared media in one place, called Shared Content. This includes the photos you shared from your gallery, via your camera app or even gif files. They all will be neatly arranged in one corner here. Unfortunately, there is no way to separate gifs you sent via keyboards and photos on Android at the moment.
It seems like every time Facebook introduces a new feature, people are polarized in all kinds of ways. I still remember when The Wall was taken down and something known as Timeline was introduced. It took me a while to get used to it, but I used to grumble about these changes every day.
Ready to sign out because of auto-playing videos on Facebook? | Shutterstock
Another such change lately is the ability to let user uploaded videos to play automatically. Oh, this not only is an annoyance (especially if you’re at work) but also a bandwidth hog. On a computer, it won’t make such a difference, but on a limited data plan, it’s a pain in the wrong places.
Once you are logged into your Facebook account from your computer/laptop, you will need to find the Settings option on the top-right corner menu.
Once there, on the left hunt for the Videos option, which should ideally be dead last. Click on it and on the right, there are only 2 options, the second one is which you need to pay attention to. Hit the drop-down button and select Off for the Auto-play Videos option and breathe a deep sigh of relief.
On iPhones
Whether you are on the latest iOS or not, if you have an iPhone, you need to first head over to the Settings menu of the phone. From here, navigate to Facebook and then to the Videos and Photos section. Here you will find an Autoplay option which wasn’t available earlier. Tap it and then select Never Play Videos Automatically, which will ensure that you won’t be interrupted while scrolling through your Facebook feed.
On Android Devices
Android being Android, you get the right settings directly from the app. So, open the Facebook app and tap the hamburger menu on the top-right corner. From here, head to the App Settings and here you will need to select Videos Play Automatically.
Once you change the option to Off you know that you are never going to see those annoying videos on your Android device ever again.
Facebook app alternative: If you’re looking for alternatives to the default app on Android, look no further than Metal, which we’ve quite liked here on GT.
Breathe Easy
These simple steps are all it would take for you to disable auto-playing Facebook videos on all platforms. While the number of views on some of the videos seems ridiculous, I’m not sure if this can be the way for Facebook to grow. But that’s just my opinion, join us in our forum to have a cold glass of your favorite ale and discuss it sensibly?
It’s been a few years now since Facebook has gotten a major redesign. Facebook updates its mobile apps pretty frequently, but the main website you access in a browser on your PC or Mac continues going untouched. It leaves a lot to be desired in terms of both looks and function. If you use Google Chrome, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Chrome’s broad extension support opens it up to a number of methods for tweaking Facebook’s design and adding new features when you’re using the website. They’re all free to install as well. If you want a better Facebook experience, it’s worth giving these extensions a go.
Photo Zoom
The Photo Zoom for Facebook extension enlarges the various small thumbnail photos scattered around Facebook as you hover over them. They stretch to the height and width of the browser window itself if necessary, so it’s easier to see someone’s profile photo or otherwise small image without having to click it.
It doesn’t seem to work for photos in photo albums or anything that opens in a viewer overlaying the page. The extension mainly shows previews for photos that, when clicked, load a new page. Otherwise, it lags or doesn’t load at all, but for photos that the extension does support it proves to be extremely convenient to hover over a small thumbnail and view the full size.
Chat Privacy
The Facebook Chat Privacy extension will save you from an enormous amount of socially awkward situations. It merely blocks your friends on Facebook from seeing when you have read their messages, allowing you to read and ignore every message that comes your way if your heart desires to. Of course you could always skip that step and bulk delete everything.
This works regardless of whether the people you’re chatting with have the extension installed and even if the friends are using a different browser or platform. If you have it and a friend doesn’t, you are still able to see if he read your message but he can’t see when you read his.Enjoy the blissful privacy.
Tip: There is a workaround for this. If you’re on the Facebook website and click to see your full messages inbox, the small check mark next to the conversation name is still visible when you read messages. Most people don’t take the time to go digging for that though, so the extension still holds value.
Facebook Themes
The Facebook Themes extension allows you to personalize your Facebook profile by choosing one of a variety of different themes available. The themes for selection are very broad, including everything from music to various cartoons to holidays. It applies a background image to your profile page and makes the content semi-transparent. Due to Facebook’s restrictive nature, everything blends in fairly nice with the layout.
Bear in mind that the theme is only visible to you as someone who has the extension installed. It does not change the look of your Facebook profile for your other friends.
The themes also require that you quickly install a separate extension called Fairshare and asks you to do so upon download for the first time. For whatever reason, this other extension is what enables the theme gallery to function.
Facebook ReFresh
Facebook ReFresh ditches Facebook’s current News Feed layout in favor of something that takes better advantage of widescreen displays. The extension removes the sidebar and online user list and fills the space with multiple columns of News Feed posts as far across as your browser window is wide.
The result looks a bit similar to Pinterest, with the posts in your feed tiled across your computer display without any alignment relative to each other. It provides for a nice effect and arguably makes better use of your screen. Plus, it’s easier to skim through posts from friends and pages without endlessly scrolling.
Facebook Chat Layout
Facebook Chat Layout spruces up the built-in messenger on Facebook’s website. The Chrome extension decks out the sidebar and your conversation windows with the theme of your choice. It includes eight themes: Rilakkuma, Hello Kitty, One Piece, Doraemon, Shin Chan, Domokun, Minion Tarepanda. They’re all cartoons so the themes aren’t for everyone, but they make your conversations pop out on the page a bit more.
The extension also promises that a theme designer is coming soon so you have more creative control over the themes. It’s not clear when the developer will add that feature, but it should make for better customization.
News Feed Eradicator
Sometimes you have something you want to tell the world, but don’t necessarily want to see what the world’s up to. Post a quick blurb and be on your way, maybe catch up with the universe later. Enter News Feed Eradicator, an extension that completely removes your News Feed from view, but still allows you to post whatever you want.
In place of your News Feed is a randomly generated quote, often with the intent of keeping you productive. If you’re the type of person that can’t shake your social networks no matter how badly you want to stay focused, this extension will come in handy. You won’t be able to get lost in your News Feed commenting on and liking what your friends have to say. It’s just you and an inspirational quote.
