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Facebook now lets you post to the News Feed and not your Timeline

Facebook introduces a new Hide From Your Timeline check box.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
Matt Elliott

You have always been able to hide posts from your Facebook page after the fact, but now Facebook lets you post to the News Feed without the items ever touching your Timeline. This new feature, perhaps inspired by the popularity and ephemeral nature of Snapchat, is useful for, say, a quick question for some of your Facebook friends or a spur-of-the-moment status update you'd rather didn't remain after the fact on your Timeline.

Currently, the new News Feed-only posting feature is available on Facebook on the Web but not on mobile. When you begin writing a status update in the box at the top of the News Feed, you'll see a new check box for Hide From Your Timeline. Check the box and your status update will be posted to the News Feed while bypassing your Timeline.

This new Hide From Your Timeline check box is not listed, however, when sharing a post from your News Feed. When sharing, you still have the same options to share to your own Timeline, a friend's Timeline or in a group or event.

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Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Posts that you've published to the News Feed while hiding from your own Timeline still show up in search. And they get listed along with the rest of your Facebook activity on the Your Posts page that is visible only to you.