What Are Push Notifications on Facebook?

Daniel Nations has been a tech journalist since 1994. His work has appeared in Computer Currents, The Examiner, and other publications. He is a developer who has published apps in the Apple App Store, Google Play marketplace and Amazon Appstore; he also has worked as a data analyst and DB administrator.

Push notifications on Facebook are the alerts you receive when your phone is locked or when you aren't actively browsing Facebook. Think of a Facebook push notification as an alert that pushes through the closed app to make you aware of any Facebook activities that may interest you.

Push notifications are useful if you don't want to miss a comment, message, livestream, or anything else on Facebook.

Turn Each Facebook Push Notification On or Off

To make sure that Facebook pushes only the notifications you want to receive, navigate to Notifications Settings, and adjust the Push setting for each notification.

1. Sign in to Facebook on a web browser or the Facebook mobile app.

Select the down arrow in the upper-right corner on Facebook.com. Tap the three lines in the lower-right corner on the mobile app.

Select Settings & Privacy >Settings on Facebook.com and on the app.

Select Notifications in the left pane on Facebook.com. On the mobile app, scroll down to Notifications and select Notification Settings.

Under What Notifications You Receive, you'll see the different Facebook notifications you can receive. Select a notification to adjust its Push setting.

Set the Push setting to On or Off.

You can push the following Facebook notifications:

• Comments: Notifies you of comments and replies to your posts and comments.
• Tags: Notifies you when someone tags you in a post or comment.
• Reminders: Reminds you of any Facebook updates that you may have overlooked.
• More Activity About You: Notifies you when someone posts to your timeline, when people like your posts, and more.
• Updates from Friends: Notifies you when friends update their statuses or post pictures.
• Friend Requests: Let's you know when someone sends you a friend request or accepts your friend request.
• People You May Know: Suggests people you may be interested in friending on Facebook, based on your current Facebook friends and their friends.
• Birthdays: Notifies you when a friend has a birthday.
• Groups: Notifies you when people post in the various groups you are in.

You must select each group to modify its Push setting.

• Videos: Notifies you when people or pages that you follow go live on Facebook.
• Events: Updates and reminders about events that you are interested in.
• Pages you follow: Notifications about activity on the pages you follow.
• Marketplace: Notifications about items for sale that you may be interested in.
• Fundraisers and crisis: Receive notifications when friends mark themselves safe on Facebook, when they create or participate in fundraisers and charity events, or when they give donations.
• Other Notifications: This covers all other Facebook notifications such as app or game requests, offers that expire soon, and nearby restaurants.

If you don't want to receive a particular type of notification, set the Allow Notifications on Facebook setting to Off for those notifications. This setting is located above each notification's Push setting. Not all notifications have this option, for example, Comments, Tags, and Friend Requests. You can also delete Facebook notifications.

Turn Facebook Push Notifications On or Off on Your Browser

If you use Firefox or Google Chrome, you can set Facebook to push notifications to your browser, or not.

1. On Facebook.com, navigate to Settings & Privacy >Settings >Notifications >How You Get Notifications >Browser.

In this section, you can also change the Sounds settings for Facebook push notifications to turn sounds on or off when a notification or message is received.

Turn Facebook Push Notifications On or Off on the Mobile App

To adjust your push notification settings on the Facebook mobile app:

1. Tap the Menu button in the lower-right corner of the screen.

Select Settings.

When you mute push notifications, a screen displays with time increments from 15 minutes to 8 hours. Select an amount of time to mute Facebook push notifications from on mobile app.

When you pick a heading, you can choose which kinds of notifications you'll receive, if any. You can use any combination of texts, emails, and alerts from the app, or you can switch them all off for that alert type.