How to Change Facebook Settings

Feeling lost in Facebook's maze of settings? You're not alone. The platform has dozens of menus and switches that control everything from who sees your photos to how your data is used. This guide cuts through the confusion and gives you a clear path to customize your account, walking you through managing your privacy, security, notifications, and profile just the way you want.

Start Here: The Facebook Privacy Checkup Tool

Before you get into the individual menus, Facebook has a great guided tool called "Privacy Checkup." It's the most straightforward way to review and adjust your most important settings without having to hunt for them. It bundles the biggest security and privacy options into a step-by-step wizard.

How to Find the Privacy Checkup

Whether you're on a computer or your phone, getting there is simple.

On Desktop:

1. Click your profile picture in the top-right corner.
2. Select Settings & Privacy, then click on Privacy Checkup.

On the Mobile App (iOS & Android):

1. Tap the menu button (three horizontal lines, often called the "hamburger menu") in the bottom-right corner.
2. Scroll down and tap Settings & Privacy, then tap Privacy Checkup.

Once you’re in, you’ll see several modules. Here’s a quick look at the most useful ones:

• Who can see what you share: This is for your future posts, profile information (like email and birthday), and your Friends list. It lets you set the default audience for everything you do.
• How to keep your account secure: This section walks you through changing your password and turning on alerts for unrecognized logins. It’s a great first step for securing your account.
• How people can find you on Facebook: This controls whether people can look you up using your email or phone number and who is allowed to send you friend requests.
• Your ad preferences on Facebook: Here, you can get a better handle on the information that influences the ads you see.

Go through each module one by one. It’s an easy, guided process that covers about 80% of what most people want to change.

A Deeper Look: Fine-Tuning Your Privacy Settings

The Privacy Checkup is great, but sometimes you want to change one specific setting. Here’s how to access them directly for more granular control.

1. Control the Audience for Your Posts

You can set a default audience for all future posts, but you can also change the audience for each individual post as you create it. Here's how to change the default setting so you don't accidentally share a personal photo with the public.

Set Your Default Post Visibility

• Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
• In the left-hand menu, click Privacy.
• Under “Your Activity,” look for "Who can see your future posts?" and click Edit.
• Choose your preferred audience: Public, Friends, Friends except..., Specific friends, or Only me.

Example: You might set your default to "Friends" for most things but change a specific business-related post to "Public" right before you hit publish.

2. Limit Who Can See Your Past Posts

What if you have years of old posts set to "Public" and want to lock them down without going through them one by one? There’s a powerful but sometimes hidden setting for that.

• Navigate to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy.
• Find the section titled "Limit who can see past posts" and click it.
• Click the button that says Limit Past Posts. This feature bulk-changes the privacy setting on all your previous posts from "Public" or "Friends of Friends" to "Friends."

Friendly warning: This change is permanent. If you later want to make an old post public again, you'll have to find it on your timeline and change its audience manually.

Take Charge of Your Profile and Tagging

Your profile is your digital home, and you should decide what appears on it. Managing tagging settings is the best way to control your online image and prevent spammy or unwanted content from being associated with you.

1. Enable Timeline and Tag Review

This is arguably one of the most useful features on Facebook. When someone tags you in a post or photo, it won't show up on your profile until you manually approve it.

• Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
• In the left-hand menu, select Profile and Tagging.
• Under the "Reviewing" section, you'll see two options:
  • "Review posts you're tagged in before the post appears on your profile?" - Turn this On.
  • "Review tags people add to your posts before the tags appear on Facebook?" - Turn this On.

With these settings active, you'll get a notification to approve tags, giving you full veto power over what appears on your timeline.

2. Decide Who Can Post on Your Profile

By default, your friends can post on your timeline. If you’d rather keep it just for your own updates, you can change that.

• While still in Profile and Tagging settings...
• Find the option "Who can post on your profile?" and click Edit.
• Change the setting from "Friends" to Only Me. Your friends can still comment on your posts, but they won't be able to start a new post directly on your profile.

Silence the Clutter: How to Manage Notifications

Is your phone constantly buzzing with reminders about birthdays and "memories"? You can tame the flood of notifications to only see what truly matters to you.

How to Customize Your Notifications

• Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
• From the left-hand menu, choose Notifications.
• You'll see a long list of categories, such as “Comments,” “Tags,” “Birthdays,” and “Groups.”
• Click on any category to manage its settings. For each type, you can typically choose to allow or disallow notifications via Push (on your phone), Email, and SMS.

Example: You might want push notifications for tags but want to turn off all notifications for birthdays or people you may know.

Bolster Your Defenses: Must-Know Security Settings

Taking a few minutes to update your security settings can protect you from getting locked out of your account or dealing with a stressful hack.

1. Change Your Password

It's always a good idea to update your password regularly.

• Go to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
• Click on Security and Login (or Password and Security in the new Accounts Center).
• Under "Login," click on "Change password." You'll need to enter your current password to set a new one.

2. Set Up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

Two-factor authentication adds an extra layer of security by requiring a code from your phone (or an authentication app) in addition to your password. This makes it almost impossible for someone to get in, even if they know your password.

• In the Security and Login menu, find the "Two-Factor Authentication" section.
• Click Edit next to "Use two-factor authentication."
• Follow the prompts to choose your security method. Using an authenticator app like Google Authenticator or selecting SMS to get text message codes are the most common choices.

3. Check Where You're Logged In

Ever use a public computer and worry you forgot to log out? This setting shows you every device currently logged into your account.

• In the Security and Login menu, you will see a section called "Where you're logged in."
• Click "See all" to view a list of devices, locations, and the last time they were active.
• If you see a session you don't recognize, click the three dots next to it and select Log Out. You can also choose "Log out of all sessions" to start fresh.

Settings For Business Owners and Creators

If you manage a Facebook Page for your brand, business, or creative work, its settings are separate from your personal profile. Here's a quick guide to some of the most common adjustments.

How to Access Page Settings

First, make sure you've switched from your personal profile to "acting" as your Page.

1. On your Page, click Manage on the right-hand side.
2. In the Professional Dashboard menu on the left, scroll down and find Page Access.

Key Page Settings to Change

• Page Access: This is where you can add or remove people who help manage your Page. You can give someone full control (like an Admin) or assign specific tasks like creating content, managing comments, or running ads. This prevents you from having to share your personal login details.
• Linked Accounts: You can find this in your Page’s main Settings. This is where you connect your Instagram account, which is necessary for cross-posting, managing DMs, and running ads across both platforms.
• Page Username: In your Page’s main Settings > General Page Settings, you can edit your username. That creates your custom vanity URL (e.g., `facebook.com/YourBrandName`), which is far more professional and easier to share than a URL full of numbers.

Final Thoughts

Adjusting your Facebook settings gives you direct control over your digital boundaries, from security and privacy to the everyday user experience. By knowing where to find these controls, you can build a more secure, less cluttered, and more intentional presence on the platform.

After locking down your personal settings, managing a busy Facebook Page brings its own set of challenges. We built Postbase to streamline the professional side of social media, so you can stop wrestling with cluttered Business Suite interfaces. Our platform simplifies everything by bringing your content calendar, scheduling for all your platforms, comments, and messages into one clean, modern dashboard. We focus on providing a reliable tool that lets you manage your brand's presence efficiently, letting you dedicate more time to what really matters: creating great content.