How to Preview Your Facebook Page

Seeing your Facebook Page through your audience's eyes isn't just a neat trick, it's a non-negotiable step in building a professional brand presence. Facebook's old View as Public feature has evolved, but the need to check your work remains the same. This guide walks you through the current, practical methods for previewing your Page to ensure every visitor has a stellar experience.

Why Bother Previewing Your Facebook Page?

You spend hours crafting the perfect content, designing compelling graphics, and writing witty captions. But if it doesn't look right to a new visitor, that effort can be wasted. Previewing your page is like checking yourself in the mirror before a big presentation. It's about spotting the small issues that can make a bad first impression and ensuring everything is aligned for your audience.

First Impressions are Everything

For many potential customers, your Facebook Page is their first point of contact with your brand. It's your digital storefront. When someone lands on your page, do they immediately understand what you do? Is your branding consistent? Is your key message front and center? Previewing allows you to step into the shoes of a first-time visitor and see if the experience is welcoming, clear, and professional.

Optimize the User Journey

A good Facebook Page doesn't just look nice, it guides visitors to take action. Previewing helps you evaluate this journey. Is your primary call-to-action (CTA) button obvious? If you want people to visit your website, is the "Learn More" or "Shop Now" button clearly visible and working? Are your page tabs - like 'Reviews,' 'Services,' or 'Shop' - organized in a way that makes sense? Seeing the page from the outside helps you spot friction points you might miss from the admin view.

Confirm How Your Content Actually Looks

The composer window where you create your posts is not the same as the final feed. Videos can get awkwardly cropped, thumbnail images for links might pull the wrong visual, and image carousels can look different than you expected. This is especially true between desktop and mobile. Previewing ensures that your carefully created content is displayed exactly as you intended, without weird formatting issues that make your brand look unprofessional.

Method 1: Using Facebook's Built-in "View As" Feature

While this tool has changed a lot over the years, Facebook still provides a straightforward way for Page admins to get a quick glimpse of what the public sees. It's the fastest method for a quick check-up.

Here's how to do it in just a few clicks:

1. Navigate to your business Facebook Page while logged into your admin account on a desktop browser.
2. Ensure you are interacting as your Page, not your personal profile. You can check this at the top right of the page.
3. On your Page's main view, locate the three-dot menu (...) on the right, next to the "Edit" and other management buttons.
4. Click the three dots. A dropdown menu will appear.
5. Select "View As" from this menu.

Instantly, your page will refresh and display a version very close to what a general external visitor would see. You'll usually see a banner at the top of the screen that says, "This is what your Page looks like to visitors." This view is excellent for checking key elements:

• Your Primary CTA Button: Is it set to "Sign Up," "Contact Us," "Follow," or whatever you intended? Give it a click to make sure the link is correct.
• Pinned Post: Is your most important announcement or top-performing piece of content pinned to the top as expected?
• Profile and Cover Photo: Do they look crisp and correctly aligned?
• Page Layout: Are your "About," "Photos," and "Videos" sections visible and properly populated?

When you're finished, simply click the "Exit View As" button in the top banner to return to your admin view. It's simple, quick, and perfect for routine checks.

Method 2: The Incognito Window Trick for a True Outsider's Perspective

Facebook's "View As" feature is good, but your browser is still logged into your account, and sometimes Facebook knows this. To get a truly unfiltered, public view - the kind someone entirely new to your brand or a search engine crawler sees - the incognito window is your best friend.

This method strips away all your login information, cookies, and cache, giving you a completely neutral perspective. It's the most reliable way to see what someone who is not logged into Facebook sees.

How to Use the Incognito Method

1. From your Facebook Page, copy its full URL from your browser's address bar.
2. Open a new private browsing window in your web browser:
   • In Google Chrome, it's called "Incognito." (File > New Incognito Window)
   • In Safari and Firefox, it's a "Private Window."
   • In Microsoft Edge, it's "InPrivate."
3. Paste your copied Facebook Page URL into the address bar of the new private window and press Enter.
4. Immediately, you'll see the pure, public version of your page, often accompanied by Facebook's prompts to "Log In" or "Create New Account" - this is how you know it's working.

What does this method let you confirm? It shows you if there are any privacy settings that are making content inaccessible to the public. If you have "public" posts that don't appear in this view, you have a settings issue that needs to be fixed. It's also the perfect way to double-check that only the information you want public is actually public.

Method 3: How to Preview Your Page on Mobile Devices

An estimated 80% of Facebook usage happens on mobile devices. A page that looks fantastic on a 27-inch monitor can look like a mess on a phone screen. Your cover photo gets cropped, long text blocks become intimidating walls of text, and details in images disappear. Checking your mobile view is not optional.

The "Pro" Method: Using Browser Developer Tools

You don't need every phone on the market to test your page. Your desktop browser comes with a powerful feature that can simulate different mobile devices right on your screen. It sounds technical, but it's surprisingly easy to use.

Here's how to do it in Google Chrome (Firefox and Safari have similar tools):

1. Navigate to your Facebook Page in a normal Chrome browser Tab.
2. Right-click anywhere on the page and select "Inspect" from the dropdown menu. A new panel full of code will open on the side or bottom of your screen. Don't worry about the code!
3. In the toolbar of this new panel, look for an icon that looks like a phone and tablet nestled together. The keyboard shortcut is often Ctrl + Shift + M (or Cmd + Shift + M on Mac). Click it.
4. Your page view will instantly shrink to a mobile screen size. At the top of the viewing area, you'll see a new bar where you can select from a dropdown list of popular devices like "iPhone 14 Pro" or "Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra."
5. Give the page a hard refresh (Ctrl + R or Cmd + R) to ensure it fully loads the mobile version.

Now you can scroll through your page exactly as someone on that specific device would. Pay close attention to your cover photo's "safe zones" - is vital text or imagery being cut off? How does your pinned video look? Is text easily readable? This view gives you the power to find and fix mobile-specific issues before your audience does.

The Simple Method: Just Use Your Actual Phone

Sometimes the most direct approach is the best. To get a 100% accurate, real-world mobile view, just use your phone. The easiest way is to either log out of your Facebook app or ask a friend who isn't an admin on your page to bring it up and send you a screenshot. This lets you experience the page's load time on a real mobile connection and see how notifications and other UI elements interact with your content.

Your Facebook Page Preview Sanity Check: A Quick Checklist

Now that you know how to preview, what exactly should you be looking for? Run through this quick checklist every so often, especially after making significant changes to your page.

• ☑️ Cover Photo & Profile Picture: Is your branding clear? On mobile, is any important text or part of your logo cut off by the profile picture or other elements?
• ☑️ Primary Call-to-Action (CTA) Button: Is the right action ("Shop Now," "Message Us") set? Click it in every preview mode to be certain the link works.
• ☑️ The "About" Information: Is your bio short, punchy, and clear? Is your website link correct and clickable?
• ☑️ Pinned Post: Is this post still relevant? It's the first thing people see in your feed, so make sure it's serving a strategic purpose.
• ☑️ Multimedia Content: Do your latest video posts auto-play correctly? Are your image-heavy posts loading without looking blurry or overly compressed?
• ☑️ Overall Readability: On a mobile screen, are your post descriptions easy to read, or do they feel like giant blocks of text that need to be broken up with line breaks or emojis?

Routinely going through this checklist can be the difference between a page that looks abandoned and one that looks meticulously managed and professional.

Final Thoughts

Seeing your Facebook page as your audience does is a simple but powerful habit for any brand builder or marketer. Using tools like Facebook's "View As," incognito windows, and mobile simulators helps you move past the cluttered admin view and focus on what truly matters: the visitor experience and the first impression your brand makes.

Continuously checking how posts appear is a core part of effective social media management, but a lot of that friction can be eased with strong initial planning. With Postbase, we designed a visual content calendar to give you that bird's-eye view before anything is scheduled. Seeing your content for the weeks ahead laid out clarifies your strategy, helps you spot gaps, and builds consistency, ensuring your brand always puts its best foot forward a long time before you hit publish.