If I had to name one App Store app that can negatively affect the performance of your iPhone, it's Facebook.
Not only can it eat tremendous amounts of storage, some of the things it does in the background also seem to chew through battery, and make your iPhone run like crap in general. It's an issue countless friends and family members run into over and over again. From freezing issues to out of storage messages to constant battery drain, Facebook almost always seems to be the culprit.
So in this very special edition of iOS Help, we're going to take a look at why Facebook makes your iPhone do strange things as well as what you can do to keep it in check.
This how-to is part of our iOS Help feature, where every week I try and help you fix the problems you're having with your iPhones and iPads. If you have a question or need help with something iOS related that you just can't figure out, I encourage you to drop a question in our iMore forums, no registration required, or send me an email at ioshelp@imore.com
Over the past several months I've been trying to figure out why my girlfriend's mother keeps having issues with her iPhone. The issues started with her iPhone 5 last year. She kept complaining that it was freezing up on her randomly. We backed up all of her stuff and did a restore. For a while the problem seemed to go away.
A few months later, the same issue. This time we decided to give her my girlfriend's old iPhone 5s since we had upgraded recently to the iPhone 6. Only a few weeks went by and again, she was having issues with her iPhone freezing. We restored again and sent her on her way only to have the issue come back a few weeks later. This is an iPhone we knew was in working order since it had been used for an entire year with zero issues. Either way, she decided she was going to upgrade to an iPhone 6, partially out of frustration.
Several weeks later, you guessed it, even more issues. This time when she brought the phone to me, I could barely unlock her iPhone without noticing how slow it was to respond. Animations, menus, everything.
When I looked under storage settings, Facebook was eating almost 6GB of storage space!
I started thinking of what she uses her iPhone for, and asked her what apps she uses most. There was zero question that her most used app by far was definitely Facebook. So I launched Settings and started poking around. When I looked under storage settings, Facebook was eating almost 6GB of storage space! Are you kidding me?! On a 16GB iPhone, that is almost half of what's even available to you!
I immediately deleted Facebook and re-installed it. I then went into Settings and disabled anything Facebook could be doing without her knowing about it. And guess what, she's had zero problems with her iPhone since then.
I'm not sure what Facebook does in the background that would cause iOS to freeze up like that, but I do know she isn't the only person to complain about this after a quick search online. Yes, Facebook caches stuff to storage occasionally but why is it caching 6 GB worth?
That's absolutely unacceptable and Facebook needs to get its act together, fast.
While I can't make the Facebook app better, I can give you some tips on what you can do to make sure Facebook isn't taking your iPhone hostage like it did hers.
See how much storage Facebook uses on your iPhone
The very first thing you'll want to check is how much storage space Facebook is using on your iPhone. I checked another friend's iPhone recently and the main photo on this article shows what I found. It seems to be a problem for a lot of people that frequently use the Facebook app.
So if you want to potentially free up a few GIGABYTES of storage space, I highly suggest following these steps:
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Usage.
- Tap on Manage Storage.
- Tap on Facebook.
- If it's eating a good amount of storage, tap on Delete App.
How to easily use Facebook on iPhone without the actual app
Now I suggest never downloading the Facebook app again and using the web version via Safari instead. Using Facebook with Safari instead of the official app gives it zero control over your iPhone and therefore eliminates all the issues that come with it.
If you add a bookmark to your Home screen, you'll barely notice the difference anyways:
- Launch Safari on your iPhone.
- Go to facebook.com and sign in.
- Tap on the Share button
- Tap on Add to Home Screen.
- Tap on Add in the upper right hand corner.
You now have easy access to Facebook on your iPhone without any of the issues the app is causing. Sure you won't receive notifications anymore but honestly, we all could use some more time interacting with real life people and less time socializing on Facebook.
However, if you insist on using the Facebook app, there's some things you need to do...
How to limit what the Facebook app can do on your iPhone
Background app refresh and location settings are a huge issue with the Facebook app. The first thing you should do is completely turn these things off by following the steps below. You should also be checking the two areas mentioned below regularly to make sure no apps that shouldn't have constant access to resources are disabled. You may be surprised how much battery life you save.
How to disable location services for Facebook
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on Privacy.
- Tap on Location Services.
- Find Facebook in the list and tap on it.
- Tap on Never.
How to disable background app refresh for Facebook
- Launch the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap on General.
- Tap on Background App Refresh.
- Turn Off background app refresh for Facebook.
Keeping Facebook in check in the future
If you still feel you need to use the Facebook app instead of a web clip, you'll need to check your storage space and make sure Facebook isn't eating into it again — which it most certainly will over time. You'll regularly have to repeat the process of deleting and re-installing the app to claim back your storage.
The only permanent solution here, at least until Facebook gets its act together, is deleting the Facebook app and not re-installing it. So take your pick and then let me know in the comments what you decided to do. And as always, if you've run into similar issues and have found any other solutions, be sure to let me know about them in the comments or by sending me an email.
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