X

How to hide the Facebook Ticker (without a browser extension)

Facebook finally added an easy way to hide the Ticker, if you know where to look.

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
2 min read

Facebook has finally added a way to hide the Ticker it introduced last year.

When Facebook introduced the Ticker to the News Feed last year, like many of new features it rolls out (cough, Timeline, cough), Facebook offered no way to disable it. I found Firefox and Chrome add-ons to hide the Ticker at the time, but now Facebook has added a control to the Ticker that lets you toggle between hiding and showing it, making it much more convenient to get rid of this newsfeed inside your News Feed.

Screenshot by Matt Elliott

Take a look at the Ticker in the right-hand column of your News Feed and you'll notice that a small arrow icon has been added to its header (you'll need to close the chat window in order to see it). Mouse over it and you'll see it says Hide Ticker. Click on the arrow and it will do just that. The Ticker collapses, leaving the rest of the right-hand column unchanged.

Facebook remembers this command, so when you return to the site later, the Ticker will still be hidden. To revive it, mouse over the arrow (now facing downward) and click it to again see the real-time activity of your Facebook friends. When hidden, the Ticker header does not include any text, but you can find the arrow to expand it at the top of the right-hand column. When you mouse over the arrow, it displays the text "Show Ticker."

Thanks for the added Ticker functionality, Facebook. Would it be too much to ask for something similar for the Timeline?

(Via Social Fixer)