Facebook notifications

[dakmommy]

Last week I made the stupid error of updating my phone and now I am constantly getting a visual notification on my facebook icon whenever I get notifications on there. There is a smaller circle with a number letting me know of notifications. I have turned off notifications on the settings when I have facebook open and under the app settings for the phone. Does this mean the app is constantly running?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! The presence of the unread notification badge itself doesn't mean the app is constantly running. But if it's changing frequently, that would indicate that the Facebook app is waking the phone frequently to check for updates, which can contribute to battery drain. Open Facebook, tap Menu>App Settings, and change the Refresh interval to a longer interval, or just make it manual. If the refresh is manual, it will always update when you first open the app. Then, if you want to get more updates while the app is open, just swipe down. If you exit the app, it shouldn't check for updates (and therefore won't wake the phone).

 

[dakmommy]

I don't see the option for the refresh interval. I have the notifications as being inactive and still get the "updates"

 

[B. Diddy]

Oh, my mistake. It looks like in some recent update (within the last few months, I would think), they got rid of that option. That's not very nice, unless they somehow optimized the code in the app to prevent it from excessive wakelocks and battery usage (which I'm almost sure they didn't). Sorry to mislead you.

EDIT: Having realized this makes me pretty annoyed at Facebook. I went ahead and uninstalled the app--I guess I'll just use the mobile site. It'll be interesting to see if I gain battery life without the FB app constantly updating. Thanks for alerting me to this!